


In This Twilight

by perryvic, Zaganthi (Caffiends)



Series: Broken Crown [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Asexual Mycroft, Blow Jobs, Branding, Demisexual Sherlock, M/M, Object Penetration, Ownership, Problematic societies, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:38:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 54,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2306666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perryvic/pseuds/perryvic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffiends/pseuds/Zaganthi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seb closed his eyes for a moment, and tried to focus, and tried to not think about Jim. "As long as he's out there, I'm a target. I'm a toy that dared to get away. I'm pretty sure that's a slow death, not a quick death."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was a routine he recognized, but with the added complication of him being a Companion...or ex-Companion. Whatever the hell he was.

"State your name and rank for the record," he was requested even though he had mentioned it before.

"Companion Sebastian Holmes, Captain, Intelligence Service." He wasn't restrained, but the fact that he was at a disadvantage in the small cell was made quite obvious to him, back to the wall quite literally, while the third officer in hours started it all up again.

"State the name of your Benefactor and your status," the officer queried. They seemed to find it all somewhat unbelievable.

"Mycroft Holmes. I'm currently registered as dead. We faked my death so I could go undercover." It was getting annoying. "I have information I need to pass on. It *is* time sensitive," he stressed again. "And there are hard drives in my ruck full of information about the terrorist group which nuked the Saint Lucia."

"The hard drives have been recovered and are in the hands of Military intelligence," the man replied. "What is your proof of identity?"

"I have my documented companion brand. Fingerprints. I'm sort of at a loss for what else to give you." He shrugged his shoulders. "There are bases in the mountains. Let me write the coordinates down for you."

"What information can you give me regarding.."

The door opened abruptly and Mycroft strode in. "Benefactor privilege. Clear the room," he said with an air of authority. 

It was a quietly surreal moment, as Seb sat there and couldn't react. Couldn't. He'd spent so long not-reacting that it was hard to start, but there was Mycroft -- he looked thinner, worn, hard around the eyes in a way that he remembered half from memory and maybe worse than before. It was easier to sit there, watching as his interrogator gawked for a moment. "Mr. Holmes, we're not done confirming his identity..."

"I can confirm his identity," Mycroft said. "He is my Companion, Sebastian Holmes. He belongs to me, not the military. Vacate the room please." There was a tone that made it obvious that was not a request but an order.

There was a brief pause, and the man did leave. He closed the door behind himself, and Seb still. Couldn't leave. He hadn't really ever thought he'd be in that moment, hadn't thought he'd ever get Paul back. Hadn't planned or hoped or... and Paul had been there the whole time.

"Sebastian," Mycroft said and approached him in a way that was the opposite to Jim's fluid movements. But the surprising thing was that he was approaching him, not looking to sit down, but reaching for him. "My Sebastian."

And now he was the one who didn't know what to do. He blinked, and Mycroft's hand was sliding onto his shoulder, curving behind it. "He had Paul the whole time." Seb didn't expect for his voice to crack at the edges when he finally spoke to someone who wasn't an interrogator.

"But you brought him home, and yourself," Mycroft said embracing him. "Many times I doubted my decision but you… you did it."

He shook his head, trying to protest, trying to stress the fact that he'd *missed* it, he'd missed that Paul was there, he'd fallen for every stupid trick ever, but he couldn't quite talk. It was easier to lean into Mycroft, sliding an arm around him a little awkwardly as he tried to focus on breathing.

"It's all right Sebastian, you will be coming home," Mycroft said. "I have missed you. And Paul." He didn't move though, just patting him in that slightly awkward way that was all Mycroft. "We will be travelling to be with Paul, and of course John. Sherlock will be joining us."

"Someone has to stop them." He swallowed as he managed to say it, though, because his work wasn't done. "Jim's, he can't stay free..." His work wasn't done, but he couldn't quite manage to pull away from Mycroft, leaning into him, damn the awkward position.

"We will stop them, but you are not going back there, not to be in his hands," Mycroft said and it was strange to feel possessiveness from a man Jim had described as the iceman and he had ended up remembering that way. Emotionless and cold. And yet...

He remembered in a strangely distant way how everything had been before. Coming home with Paul from missions, sliding into bed with Mycroft while the other man read, lounged with a book in one hand and his arm around one of them. Casual comfort that showed up at the oddest times, and sharper than that, the memory of coming across Mycroft with the gun in his hands, because Paul was gone. He wasn't cold, heartless, hadn't been after Seb had been presented. Just private, because it was safer.

Seb shifted, started to stand up, still not letting go. He turned his head, pressed his face against Mycroft's neck. He was half familiar, old, buried sense memories that were mingled up with imagined and real slights that he'd held onto to make it all possible to hold on while he'd been with Jim. "I want to go home."

"You are coming home," Mycroft promised. "Paul needs you." He hesitated and made the nearest thing to a declaration of affection and commitment he had ever heard. "I need you." He was embracing him properly then.

He shook his head, still leaning into Mycroft, because he wasn't any help, he wasn't going to be any help, he didn't know what was in his own head, never mind... Never mind anything else. Everything was still past numb, and didn't quite make sense. Hadn't for a while. "I should be in prison."

"No. You do not. You were following my orders. You have acted no differently to any others in deep cover with far greater results," Mycroft murmured. "I am responsible for you and your actions morally and legally. We will go to Germany, and you will be checked out, Paul will be examined and then you will come home and recover. And you will not have to do anything until you choose to do so because you have done so much."

And now there wasn't really anything to do.  Seb had always been impulsive. It was probably his greatest weakness when it came to operations, that he was all urge and instant and impulse even if he could wait quietly up in a hiding spot for hours. The first chance that presented itself for a kill, and he took it, even if it was better to wait for a more perfect moment. A half good moment was good enough. He understood the point of suicide watches just then, with a knotted up ball of guilt and sensation hunching up behind his eyes. And it would all come out some day, a big event like that didn't go away, someone would find out he was working it undercover. There'd be pictures, somewhere, stories of two white fellows organizing this and that, other intelligence agencies’ reports.

"I'm fine," he mumbled against Mycroft's incongruously sharp, stiff shirt fabric. All fingers and toes still attached, he was fine. No one needed to check him out. Fuck, he'd just gotten back from bloody holiday, he was *really* fine, and that made it all surreal. Not that it had been a holiday, really, but it had been restful in its own ways, and that jangled. Everything he and Jim had done jangled and grated against that duller reality, duty or not.

"No, you are not, but you will be," Mycroft said. "I had not anticipated John being involved. Sherlock has been... unbearable in the interim. Now, are you ready to come with me? They have your details and a signed statement from myself as well as a Benefactor injunction to release you into my keeping."

He took a deep breath, and nodded more than he could dredge up a verbal answer. "No reason to stay." And there was a lot of travelling ahead. The flight to Germany would be long, and then the flight back home, if, when he got there. He shifted, started to pull away. "Did Sherlock tell you when he came across me?"

"In his own way," Mycroft steered him with his hand at the base of his back. "He sent a cryptic message and then headed off trying to get an angle on the organization himself."

"How far did he get? I know he got the drive I left him." It didn't feel real, none of it. The pause to open the door, the interior hallway of the base, the bustle of a normal sort of world around them, it didn't seem real.

"He managed to infiltrate one of the organizations subsidiary bases. However it seemed that was the point when John was targeted. An effective maneuver as it successfully stopped his investigation," Mycroft said.

"Hey Seb," Mark loomed out of the darkness next to the door. It pulled up a startle reaction he hadn't been expecting. He was always on his toes with Jim -- a second's hesitation could mean new scars, missing fingers, something *horrible* to deal with. "If anyone asks I'm guarding you. Don't tell them how you used to kick my ass okay?" He managed to not hit the man, but he could feel muscles cramp in his arm from the stress of not having immediately struck him.

"Sure." It didn't sound real to himself, to his own ears. He could feel Mycroft's fingers against his back, while he hesitated for a moment. There was Mark, like nothing had happened. Like nothing had gone wrong. 

Mycroft had instructed him to take a pill on the flight to take the edge off. It had made him fuzzy and mellow and completely incapable of holding on to thought for a few hours. He'd managed to sleep a little too, much to his shock. 

Mark escorted them into the base and they had what was most likely the best billet in the whole base allocated to them. They were trying to catch up with what had happened to Paul and John.

Paul had been taken in for examination. There was a minor infection, and some talk of reworking the amputation site. Which meant more time in hospital. They wanted to do it soon, right there, it sounded like. Seb mostly wanted to see Paul, see John. John was apparently already out of surgery, but he'd had a head start on them, too. 

Mycroft was ushering him to the doctors. "We can visit Paul and then get you checked over or vice versa, which would you prefer?"

"Get the check over done with." Then he could stay and visit without being interrupted.

"Fine. I want you to be as cooperative as possible. Do you want me to attend?" Mycroft asked. 

He had to think about it for a moment. His first instinct was to say no. Because whatever he was going to have to walk through with a doctor was private and hard to explain. Except it was a perfect opportunity to not have to explain it again. Mycroft could have it all laid out for him clinically. Or, he could just hand him the file. "I." No, still couldn't make a decision. "Whatever. You could go on up ahead and see Paul."

"I will stay." Mycroft said obviously picking up on his hesitance. He stopped a nurse. "I believe we are to see Dr Blaine if you could let him know we are here."

"Mr Holmes, of course. Let me take you to an examination room." She gestured, and Seb fell into step with Mycroft as they started to walk.

He was ushered in and told to sit on the bed and Mycroft sat in the corner. A pleasant enough looking man stepped in. "Benefactor Holmes, this is your Companion Sebastian yes? I'm going to check your vitals."

"Sure." He leaned back on his hands. He was still dressed in the gear they'd escaped in, good hiking gear, but he'd left the tunic back at the base, and was down to t-shirt and cargoes.

"Take off your top please?" Dr Blaine said. "I'll take some bloods first, do a full screen okay? How has your health been?"

"Good. It's been good." He shifted, pulling his t-shirt up over his head. He might as well get it over with. Get it all over with. Jim had turned his skin into something the looked like a roadmap. He liked bloodplay, and so had Seb. And anything else Jim did.

He heard Mycroft's intake of breath and he couldn't help the strange feeling of shame. It had been ingrained into him as a Companion. "Well, you have been in the wars...these scars...they look inflicted is that correct?"

And some of them were still scabbed, still healing. He had a gauge mark at his hip that still had stitches in. "Mmm. And fights." That was almost cooperative. He could catalogue most every scar, from before Jim and after Jim. That was sort of how everything felt, before Jim was some distant hazy fun memory, like normal people talked about Uni after they were long out of it. And then there was after Jim, and that was everything else, near, persistent, and Mycroft was sitting in the corner watching. Seb couldn't look back at him.

"I see. Well, I'll take some pictures to document them," Dr Blaine said and used a pressure cuff to check blood pressure and allow him to tap for a vein. "How have you been sleeping?"

"Lightly." Like Jim could kill him in his sleep at any moment for the hell of it. It wasn't paranoia, given that he'd woken up for sure at least twice with the man's hands wrapped around his throat almost tenderly. He held still for the man, moved compliantly.

"I'm going to listen to your breathing. Inhale...exhale...that's it," Dr Blaine said. "Good. Can you just get on the scales there for me?"

It was all very routine, easy to do, to slip off of the examination table and to stand on the scales while the man weighed him. He'd lost weight, he already knew that. He was pretty sure he'd gained muscle, though, so it evened out.

"Any broken bones that you are aware of?" Dr Blaine asked as he noted the number down. "Head injuries?"

"I had a mild concussion about six months ago. Fractured a rib about four months ago? And I chipped the bone on my left knee last year. Not bad, though." He stepped off of the scale, trying to not have his posture tense.

"That's good. Headaches, dizziness at all? What has your appetite been like?" Dr Blaine asked as he documented the scarring on Seb's torso.

He settled on the examination table again. "Appetite's been fine. I just finished a fresh fruit tour of south central Asia."

"You've been there? What other countries have you visited in the last twelve months?" Dr Blaine asked. Mycroft was just watching him from across the room, probably putting together the stories from just looking at him.

"Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Mongolia, Tibet, Singapore, Indonesia, Tunisia, Iran, and a quick stop in Egypt. I was up on all my travel vaccinations." Thanks to the job, because Jim didn't much care about things like that.

"Well travelled. Now I need you to remove your trousers and underwear with your Benefactors permission," he asked.

"Granted," Mycroft said.

He slipped from the table again, and had to undo his boots with care. It was mechanical, undressing -- sliding his cargos off, his pants. That was the rest of the scars, the damage to his knee he'd taken knocking Jim over when someone had decided it was time for Jim to die. 

And at that point, what did it matter if Mycroft gave his fucking permission or not?

He'd been used like a piece of meat and Ms Adler had been right. He had been waiting for someone to shake him apart like that and his body bore the marks of it all over. The doctor did the normal examination of his genitals. "I need to do an internal if possible. Have you ever passed blood?

"Couple of times." He gave a tight expression, and added, "the reason why wasn't really a mystery."

"I see. Lie on the couch there will you, face down," he said.

He worked his jaw for a moment. "I'd rather not."

"It is difficult to do prostate exam in a different way," Dr Blaine said.

"Sebastian, are you uncomfortable with that?" Mycroft asked.

Brilliant. "Yes, I'm uncomfortable with that. All right? My prostate's bloody fine, I'm not doing that." His voice dropped a little lower, because it was *all* discomfiting to talk about.

"Then leave that part of the exam Doctor if you would," Mycroft said. "Get dressed again Seb, I believe that is sufficient for a check up." 

"Your Companion is showing signs of hypertension and excessive stress," Dr Blaine said. "He is underweight, though not worryingly so for his height and body type. Obviously he has had inflicted wounds on a regular basis but they have healed well."

"Understood. Do let me know the blood results when you have them," Mycroft said in a clear dismissal of the man.

He watched the man leave, taking the blood for the lab work with him after he wrote a few more things down. It gave him a little quiet to get dressed again, sitting on the edge of the examination table, once he had his cargos and shirt back on, to pull his boots back on in silence.

"Seb.." Mycroft said quietly. "What he did to you...that was him wasn't it?"

"If you mean Jim, yeah." He tied the laces tightly, and managed to get steadily on his feet. "Everything was Jim." The whole world was Jim, had been since he'd left Mycroft's house. "He. You always did plan to send me off to him."

"I planned for you to go undercover. I knew it would be dangerous but...my feelings changed. I did not want to do that and then...Paul." Mycroft exhaled as he stood. "What he has done to you is...beyond what I could have believed. I would never have sent you knowingly to that." 

"You just planned to send me unknowingly into that." He put his hands into his pockets. "My first night home, you laid this... this grand plan out, that I was perfect to infiltrate this one particular group that'd risen up. That as my reward, you'd cut me loose, like that was. Like. It was somehow a trade off, an acceptable trade off. Like being severed from everything I knew and being turned out on the street to start over was somehow an excellent reward." He looked at Mycroft -- the vague defeat in his posture, the expression on his face. "Now, I figure it's something you might have personally found to be a relief. C'mon, let's go see Paul."

Mycroft looked grim as they stepped out. "It is obvious this is not the time to discuss this Sebastian. I admit responsibility, and you are justified in your anger if coming to incorrect conclusions. We'll talk again later when things have settled down somewhat." He walked along the corridor slowly, heading towards one of the wards where Mycroft got them let in to see Paul.

Paul was already wired up with monitors and in scrubs, waiting to go down into surgery. He looked haggard in the artificial light of the ward but smiled when he saw them both. "Hey... just caught me before they wheeled me down."

His hair was shaggier than Seb ever remembered seeing it, even in old pictures that Paul had but liked to keep hidden. It didn't really feel real that he was there, that he was laying on a bed with the shape of the sheet around his legs not quite right. Paul had managed better with a crutch and one leg than some of his men had managed with two healthy legs and no lingering infections. "They're moving fast. John did that crap of a job on you?" Seb was reaching for wry, but wasn't really feeling it. He wasn't really feeling anything, just tension and disconnection. He wanted to know what the 'correct' conclusions were, not just dismissed because Mycroft was... Mycroft, and couldn't be arsed to explain things to the fucking peons.

"Nah, he did a bloody good job. One of the surgeons who came and looked said there was no way in hell he would have tried doing that on his own," Paul was looking at him. "It should just be a tidying up procedure, set it up for better interaction with a prosthesis."

"How are you otherwise?" Mycroft asked

"Probably not that dissimilar to Seb but with more malnutrition thrown in," Paul said. "How you feeling kiddo? As bad as you look?"

He smirked almost as an automatic reaction to that. It had been easier to interact with Paul while they'd been escaping. He hadn't hesitated then, hadn't had the opportunity to, because it had all been focused on getting Paul out of there, down the drop, across the wide open spaces that made his nerves crawl. Now he was at a loss, lingering in a little closer to Paul, but. He'd been there all along. Jim had had him all along, and Seb hadn't noticed. He should have noticed. He'd been fucking living it up, and Paul'd been suffering. It *really* hadn't been that bad for Seb. "I'm all right."

"Yeah, right." Paul looked at him. "Get your ass over here. In case anyone has forgotten to say it, you did good Seb. You deserve a fucking medal."

He shook his head, even as he did come closer to Paul, stopping to stand at the edge of the bed. All wired up was a pretty disturbing look on the other man, but he still managed to look not at all weak. It was funny. "I crossed a lot of lines for no reason." 

"Don't give me that bollocks," Paul said in a low voice. "You don't think I crossed lines to survive? Now you know who had me and for how long, you know what he would have done. You and I know. Others won't understand."

"I'm well responsible for..." One of the most infamous attacks on civilians. "I. what do you want me to say ? I don't know what comes next. "

"Seb, I don't want you to say anything," Paul said. "I've been on this merry-go-round before. What you're feeling now is fall-out and it's a goddamn doozy. I've got it too, we're screwed up to hell and back, no magic wand is going to fix what happened. But, you just need to let it unravel and not freak out with it. We'll all be doing that."

He was getting counselling from the prisoner of actions other than war, and torture victim. Seb licked his bottom lip. "I missed you."

Paul gave a chuckle. "You have no idea how much I missed you, and Mycroft." He smiled a little but it was brittle. He gripped his hand and murmured. "I just want to go and sleep in a normal bed with you and Mycroft. Just...sleep. If it weren't for your friend John I wouldn't have made it."

"I know. We'll, we'll thank him. John was always..." Pretty impressive. Pretty remarkable, as far as people went. Seb gripped Paul's hand back. "Yeah."

"Mmm. I ...it gets better Seb. Takes time but it does get better," he said.

"Maybe." He wanted to believe it, but nothing felt real just then, nothing felt connected. He'd fucked up, he'd done horrible things. He just... There was no one to talk to about it.

The doctors were coming in then, and Mycroft looked older than his years as he stood next to them both. "We're taking him down now," the surgeon said. "I recommend you go get some sleep, he won't be out of recovery for some time."

"Good luck," Seb said more than a little fondly. He only let go of Paul's hand reluctantly, turning his attention back to Mycroft.

"Perhaps we should follow his suggestion," Mycroft said stepping back as Paul was wheel away.

Seb lingered, watching for a moment. "Is John still in surgery, or...?"

"I believe so. The only information I have is that they were doing some careful work to ensure that there is no loss of dexterity," he replied.

Fuck. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck. One of his men had shot John. Someone he'd led. "Back to the billet?"

"Yes, no doubt Sherlock will be here shortly," he said. "Then neither of us will have peace."

"Sherlock won't be waiting for John?" No, of course not. He was of Mycroft's ilk. Like Jim. There was something just... Seb didn't know. He fell into step with Mycroft while the man walked.

"He will be waiting actively shall we say," Mycroft answered. "Or so I would surmise based on previous behavior."

Seb slipped his hands into his pockets, and looked sideways at Mycroft. "And what will you be doing?"

"I... must work," he replied. "There is much only I can do unfortunately. It is my hope that you will rest."

Seb kept at his side as they left the hospital. It was past dark now, and he was tired, but not bone tired. "Can I help?"

"You have done a lot and you need a break," he said. "If you want to help… We shall find a way." He looked awkward and unsettled.

Which, Seb supposed, he was. "If you're still dealing with Jim, it'd be daft to not ask me, and a waste of the last two years." 

"True," Mycroft acknowledged that. "I do not want to over strain you." Mycroft seemed awkward some how as if he was trying too hard.

He probably was. "Let's not get too concerned about that now, yeah?" He could hold it together that long, long enough to be useful.

"Then we will work together," Mycroft promised. "And return and see Paul after his operation." Yeah. He could hold on that long, Seb decided as he focused his eyes ahead. It would make it almost like a normal day.

* * *

Waking up from surgery, was obscurely like waking up with a hangover of doom, and a head stuffed full of cotton wool. He could feel the curious detachment and soft fuzziness that came with morphine all through his system. At least he wasn't in the cave system any more.

He was out. He was in a land of bright lights and fluorescence and busy sounds gathering outside of his door. 

"There you are. I wondered how long you'd stay under anesthetics, which I suppose you haven't completely shaken at this time. You were *missing*." Sherlock said it as if he were offended and caught out by it and angry at the same time. "You're not supposed to do that."

"Sherlock?" He was slurring and then smiling inanely. "Didn't want to." He was faintly surprised to see him there.

"No, you were trying to spread joy and happiness through basic medical care in a country that hates us. And with good reason, given that we're using them as chess pieces at the same time they attempt to do the same with us. There was still work to be done, but it was boring, and Moriarty has gone to ground for the moment. Not unsurprisingly, he was last seen somewhere in Indonesia. All of his networks are tapped, and we've burned most of his bank accounts. Still, he's a rather large rat to try to cage."

"Don't underestimate him," John said. The mention of Jim pierced the fog in his mind. "He's...different to normal terrorists and criminals." Sherlock wouldn't know what the man was capable of personally. He'd only seen the strategies and patterns.

"It's amazing. I'm surprised Sebastian was capable of keeping up with him. It's not going to be easy, but he is insane. That's a weakness neither Mycroft nor myself have. We'll find him." There was the oddest mental image of Sherlock as a giant cat to match the giant rat.

"He uses it as a strength," John said trying to shake off the remnants of the cotton wool feeling. He felt slightly panicked at Sherlock's dismissive attitude. "Sherlock, you don't know him. Seb will tell you... he's more interested in playing with you than anything else."

Sherlock was smiling as he reached to put a hand on John's good shoulder. "Sebastian is currently assisting Mycroft on this matter. Or, he was. I suppose he still would be, though I suppose staving off an imminent nervous breakdown does consume a large amount of energy. I heard that Paul's out of surgery as well. You did an excellent job, John. You should write it up for the journals."

John was slightly stunned at that. Only Sherlock would be impressed by that. "Are Seb and Paul okay?"

"Physically, quite well. You clearly focused your considerable energies on rehabilitating Paul's health while you were in captivity, which I'm sure Mycroft is glad of."

"I'm worried about them," he said. Sherlock was swimming into focus a bit more. "I don't remember what happened."

"You were shot. It was a large calibre bullet, very expensive, very *effective* at long distances. The man didn't scrimp on supplies. You continued to flee with Paul and Sebastian, and you were picked up by a helicopter in friendly territory, with Paul and Sebastian."

He tried to recall it, it was there and hazy. "I suppose I should apologize for being abducted," he said lightly. It was the Companion way.

Sherlock snorted, and leaned in close to John. "Don't ever apologize for that. You saved two lives with your mishap. Also, one of the men in your convoy survived. Your abductors were sloppy."

"They told me they were all killed," he said startled at that. "I believed them. Jesus...Who? "

"NCO, your driver? He's still in hospital back home, but he hasn't lost any cognitive functions, and his recovery is quite positive." Sherlock was never a man to sugarcoat information, so he could trust that information.

"Great, that's great.." John tried to get his own cognitive functions working. "Moriarty wanted to turn me Sherlock. He seemed pretty positive he had turned Seb."

"Mmm, he didn't. Unless this is some extended triple cross, but Sebastian doesn't have the capacity to pull something like that off," Sherlock mused. "Though he did manage to fool Moriarty. Or perhaps Moriarty let him think he'd fooled him."

"It's the game.." John said shifting slightly feeling a stab of pain. "Ow."

"You were shot," Sherlock reiterated, sitting back. He looked oddly concerned, as far as Sherlock's expression went, sharp and focused on John. "Regardless, I expect that he was getting off on putting Sebastian through multiple moral conundrums, and was waiting for an opportunity to have him, perhaps, execute Paul. I don't believe he could have 'turned' you, any more than he 'turned' Sebastian."

"He's hurt him." John could remember the look in his eyes. "I want to see him when he's ready...please? I thought he was dead and then he walked in that cell."

"Of course you can see him, why would I stop you? While I was away, before you were snatched, I picked up the organization's trail at a shura. There was a tall man there, pale, sunburnt, and his accent was quite. It wasn't that there was an undertone of British, but it was a style of accent mimicry that I was familiar with from many of Mycroft's agents. It's the effect you get when every British agent speaking German sounds like Bruno Ganz. I followed him at a distance afterwards, and recognised his gait. I'm sure you would have, too. It's an aggressive gait, even when he's walking slow and quiet. It reminds me of that funny little skip thing you do when you're trying to keep up with me, did you do that with Sebastian when you were at the centre? But all you companions bounce a bit. I'm not sure if it's purposefully trained to or not. Mummy always did it as well." There was a brief thoughtful look on Sherlock's face, and he was quiet. "He was playing hard to get when I finally pinned him down, and he told me then how far into the organization he'd gotten. I could tell it had come at great cost to him personally. He told me to come back in a week to that spot for a flash drive. It was there the next day, and contained information that sketched out the loose shape of what was to happen. And many other things. We're using the information he's supplied to carefully burn or corral or watch a long list of organizations. Documentation, the downfall of many an empire. I imagine the Nazis burning and shredding paper as the Russians marched into Berlin."

"How much of the cruise ship disaster did you pre-empt?" John asked. The image of that was still burned in his memory, but if they had known then maybe the loss of life had been minimised.

"We kept the Americans from moving a carrier strike group into the area. That's over 7,000 lives which would've been heavily compromised in the resulting bomb, and then the first responders to *that*. There were selected individuals on the ship who were high value targets who never boarded due to... interference. While we were unable to stop the very small, very precise team who planted the primary and secondaries on the ship, we were able to capture all of the operators who were involved in the tertiary strikes in downtown Calcutta and Bombay. We considered those the primary targets, and were unable to know where the fissile material was going to end up. Given the size of the bombs involved in those strikes, the loss of life still would have been immense if it had gone off. Far surpassing the loss of the strike group, though the larger political ramifications would've been less." Sherlock leaned forward again, and pushed John's hair off of his forehead. "They're going to discharge you. I suppose I'll have to join the home office, after all."

"I..you don't have to if you don't want to," John said. "Not because of me." That was counter to everything they were taught. "Moriarty wanted us to watch, we had to watch it...and I know Seb is blaming himself. He helped plan it."

"Quite an able planner, too." Sherlock's expression was thoughtful as he kept his eyes focused on John. "And don't be daft. If I can't have you in the field with me to support me, what's the point? I hated working with incompetents, I'm not going back to that again."

"I might be able to go back," John protested weakly. The thought filled him with an complete and utter panic at this precise moment but that was understandable. It had to fade eventually.

"Given the state of your shoulder, you'd be unable to carry your ruck for more than six minutes at a time, which is understandable as it weighs almost as much as you do. And while we're progressive about integrating wounded warriors back into the force I don't think you'd be pleased with an office job administering veterans benefits or doing locum work when you're still a very capable doctor, albeit non-deployable. I'm sure the home office is less picky about whether you carry your equipment across one shoulder or both." Which would be months down the line, but Sherlock sounded unconcerned. A Benefactor was supposed to push to keep their companion where they were, not to follow them. It was all backwards, and that was very disorienting with the pain medications muddled in. 

"I'm sorry Sherlock," he apologised at that again although it was a bad way to discover the extent of his shoulder injury. The movies ignored the fact there was a lot of bone in a shoulder that could get smashed up.  "Fuck, this has screwed up everything." He was finding it hard to find a bright side.

"No, it would have 'screwed up everything' if you'd been  shot in the head." Sherlock's voice was very firm as he said it. "Which was probably what he was aiming for, only he failed to take into account all of the factors of a good shot, particularly the effects of wind, and hit your shoulder instead. Anyway, we haven't been home in too long and I miss the flat."

"When will we be able to leave?" John asked. He needed to see his chart to figure that out but right now he suspected the words would be blurry. He liked the thought of going home to the flat.

He liked the thought of being home, of England -- rain and chill. He wasn't sure what he'd do without the boiling heat he'd been exposed to again and again in Afghanistan. "Three, four days. You might be in a British hospital by then, and they do want to debrief you at some point. Still, the personnel recovery people get a notch in their belt for a successful recovery and you three did the hard work." 

"I don't want you to get bored," John said. Sherlock was dangerous when he got bored which had been the problem with Jim. "Because all breaks loose when that happens."

"I'll find something," Sherlock murmured. "My brother will definitely *try* to find me something, which means I'll have to find *other* things to do as well. The whole world isn't made up of merely intelligence reports. There's other things to investigate. Details I'd like to delve deeper into." He'd manage to keep busy just out of a sense of contrariness against Mycroft.

"You like solving a puzzle, not creating it," John said woozily. "You would be amazing at solving crimes. Not the ordinary ones but you know...the really weird things."

"I was thinking that, actually." He was maybe imagining that Sherlock sounded surprised. It was good that Sherlock sounded surprised, he liked to surprise his un-surprisable Benefactor. Sherlock fished his phone out of his pocket, and started to text something.

Maybe everything as going to work out all right.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What did I do? What the fuck did any of that accomplish? I..." Did everything Jim wanted, just like he did everything Paul wanted, just like he did everything Mycroft wanted. Didn't question, didn't stop, just did it, and worked it out later. He moved in reluctantly closer, and let Paul reel him in. His hands felt thin, weak against Seb's shoulder, and he wanted to fix that, too, as he leaned in to loosely hug him.

It was still oddly like being adrift, and Seb had always been shit at bridging that sort of divide. He could force himself to play parts pretty easily, but he didn't want to play a part just then. He wanted to rest, and they'd fed Mycroft's operatives everything Seb could think of, ferreted out traps, and just... he had nothing left. 

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked as Mycroft set his phone down on the bare desk in their billet.

"Mmm?" Mycroft glanced up and looked surprised. "Ah... yes, I forgot. We should get something sent in."

"I don't really think they do that on post," he pointed out, because even Generals had to get off their arses and get their food. He stood, muffling a yawn. "It's daylight out there. We can go get something local, yeah?"

"I can get Mark to organise something," Mycroft said. "I'm sorry, I should have realised you needed to eat."

It made him wonder if Mycroft had been living on air while he had been away.

He had lost weight, lost it in a way that made him look bad and hollowed out, not healthy. He looked like Jim on a bender. "Yeah, I could use a meal. Jim ate like a fucking bird."

"I suppose we could take a break," he said leaning back. "The immediate concerns have been dealt with."

"We expanded operations pretty vastly when I joined. Without the help, he's got a lot of balls in the air that he doesn't enjoy juggling, and a nasty recreational amusement requirement to manage at the same time." He might just end up tidying out a lot of loose ends himself. Seb wandered closer to Mycroft.

"Your skills in that manner are admirable," Mycroft said. "In effect it made the group big enough to be visible to the monitoring networks. What food are you craving?"

“Dunno. Breakfast, at this point." He was standing beside Mycroft, and it was a stupid urge, but he was all about stupid urges. He let his hand linger on Mycroft's shoulder. 

"Germany breakfasts involve a lot of meat. That might suit you," Mycroft said. He seemed a little startled at the touch but stood still without flinching. "Let's see if Mark knows somewhere useful."

"Somehow, I wouldn't be shocked if he's scoured around. Coffee, coffee'd be good." Real coffee, where he could taste the roast. He stepped back, waiting for Mycroft to follow.

They exited the room. "Mark, we have a request for a place that does a decent breakfast locally and proper coffee."

Mark looked at them both, looking thoughtful as he nodded. “There’s a little diner dive sort of place, if you go up from here, about a bit under a mile." Sounded doable as a walk, Seb decided.

"Thank you Mark, what do you think Seb?" Mycroft asked. He seemed very concerned about asking him things, he noticed that.

It was a little odd. Mycroft had always been easily imperious. "Let's go, then. That's not far."

"And, it’s safe here," Mark said agreeably. "Do you want me to tag along, or...?"

"Take a break Mark or visit Paul and if he has woken up, tell him we will be along to see him shortly," Mycroft said. "Now, let’s see what breakfast in Germany is all about."

"Meat, I bet. India had interesting breakfasts. Did you know they invented crepes?" He put his hands into his pockets, and fell into step with Mycroft. It wasn't at all easy, and he could feel echoes of Jim clinging to him.

"I was aware of chapattis but not of that," Mycroft said as they set out to briskly leave the building. It was early morning, and Seb was sure he could smell the moisture in the air. "Tell me about India, what you enjoyed."

"Moong bean dosa. You can get it paper thin, and it's like a perfect crepe. The fruit was good, too. There was a lot of history to explore, and that was..." He shrugged. Good, it'd been great, and then he worked and rigged bombs and organized mass destruction. Nothing personal. "I killed a tiger."

"You did?” Mycroft sounded interested. "You went hunting tigers specifically or was that accidental?"

"Specifically. It was pretty interesting, took a couple of days. Side job, it was harassing a village. Jim bitched the whole time, when he couldn't get phone signal. Paul would’ve enjoyed it." 

"The two of you would have been in your element no doubt," he commented. "Paul has been known to enjoy his hunting." He exhaled.

"He will again." Seb shrugged a little. "I, uh. This sucks."

"I apologise," Mycroft said and glanced at him. "I have been backsliding in my ability to deal with personal things over the last year or so."

"I meant it in a general sense. I missed you. I missed Paul. It's just..." He was angry and tired and hungry, and that edge tended to lower his defences, which was a scary feeling.

"I have most definitely missed the both of you," Mycroft answered as they walked. "I cannot describe how hard it was, constantly wondering what had happened to the both of you and knowing you were no doubt experiencing worse than what I could imagine.

"I think Paul got the short end of the stick." Life with Jim had been fucked up, but... Free. Relatively.

"I think all of us have in different ways," Mycroft said. "I suspect therapy will be compulsory."

"I'd rather not." Mycroft probably had someone on the payroll for that, but Seb couldn't even give voice to half of the things that were making his nerves itch. "Have you ever done that?"

"Therapy? No. Well, I was sent once. I did more thorough notes on myself than the therapist. His work was sloppy." Mycroft replied with a hint of his old arrogance.

Seb felt the edges of his mouth moving of their own volition. He kept scanning the area around them, but there were only singular fellows out there in their PT gear. "Why were you sent?"

"The first time a decision I made sent people to their death," Mycroft said. "It was considered compulsory."

"Is anyone trying to compel you now?" Not likely. Seb took his hands out of his pocket. Up ahead, he could see the place. Brick building, worn looking, four cars in the parking lot at the front, two round back. It looked all right -- there was a soldier in PT gear loping out, and that made him feel better as well. "Companions aren't supposed to get therapy."

"No, but there might come a point where you would like to talk to someone about your feelings towards me. I am not blind to your reactions to me Seb," Mycroft said.

"What are my reactions to you, then?" And what had they been? Never really stable, steady. He'd always felt like a proxy, a tool, and then he'd focused on getting Paul back for Mycroft. And he'd gotten Paul back for Mycroft. They were always... He expected them to click, to settle just fine. And Seb didn't need to be there for that, did he? Which took him back to things he didn't really want to think about.

"You are uncertain of your place with me, you hold rage and anger towards me for asking you to do something unforgivable when I should be protecting you," Mycroft said calmly. "You feel...disposable, and I assure you are not but I know words are not enough."

"If it helps, I always felt disposable. Day one." He'd still done his best, given his all despite it, hadn't he? "Didn't make things better or worse." He pulled the door open when they reached the place, and held it for Mycroft.

"I made significant errors. I underestimated what having a Companion meant. My cold plans were... not based in reality. Then as I was pleased at your training, I rapidly altered my thought to send you away as deep undercover," Mycroft said, looking down at his feet as they walked. "You may ask Paul of that. We discussed it."

Paul had a way of getting under Seb's skin. Mycroft could read his every body gesture, but Paul got right to the heart of what he was thinking, and made him feel like a heel. Thirty seconds at the hospital, and he'd just... done it. Just like that. And Seb hadn't done shit for him. "I believe you. Just... you know, I've got a really impressive memory, and neither of you ever mentioned there'd been a change of heart. And Jim... You were right. I *was* just what he was looking for. He." Seb swallowed a noise in the back of his throat. "Go on, get in and pick a booth. Let's get something to eat."

"We did not realize you had internalized so much of that first… ill-advised conversation," Mycroft said as he sat down. "At the time I, well, there were many factors involved but many of them came back to me believing that freedom would be a goal and a prize for you. It was a miscalculation of Companion psychology, and arrogance on my own behalf." He glanced at the menu board. "I am rather hungry. Interesting."

Seb slid into the seat across from him at the booth, slouching a little as he picked up the menu. Meats, sausage, eggs, bread-stuffs, not bad. Actual food for once. "Not gunna argue with the arrogance statement, no. I'm a little irked you keep calling it companion psychology. You suggested that cutting me loose from everything I know, like it was the best plan ever, and expected me to not just be a bit put out. Try 'human' psychology. I'd like to see how you'd react if the government told you that you were free to pursue anything you liked, but to please leave. Now. Your box of shit's on the front lawn. Now how's that for freedom?"

"Right now, not an unattractive prospect," Mycroft sounded weary as he ordered a full breakfast and gestured for him to likewise. "But I take your point. Emotions are something I am not adept with. Patterns and information I master, but this is a challenge I continually struggle with. "

"Hadn't noticed." He added coffee to his own order, and then leaned back in the bench, stretching for a moment. Seb's leg brushed Mycroft's under the table, and he left it there. Jim was all constant contact, and Seb realized a little distantly that he'd been with Jim almost as long as he'd been with Mycroft and Paul. Maybe the same amount of time, maybe longer. He needed to sit down with a calendar and check. And Paul had been there, too, and he hadn't even fucking known. "So what do we do now?"

"We try and reconnect. Make sure these misunderstandings do not occur again, and ensure that you are not a target,” Mycroft said. He did not move away from the casual touch.

It was almost novel, though he understood that Mycroft was neither repulsed nor actually interested in it. He wondered if Jim was the same way, and it was all an extended game he got off on. Sometimes, he'd wondered, and sometimes it had seemed very genuine that the man was interested in contact for the sake of it, not for any deeper purpose. Seb closed his eyes for a moment, and tried to focus, and tried to not think about Jim. "As long as he's out there, I'm a target. I'm a toy that dared to get away. I'm pretty sure that's a slow death, not a quick death."

"Yes, I am sure that is how he thinks. But you are *mine* not his and he will be sorely disappointed if he thinks you are his toy," Mycroft said implacably.

It was strange and familiar to have a veritable picture wall of memories press up in his mind, of Jim, in bed with Jim, fucked over the sofa, knife against his neck, back of a taxi with him and finally -- finally! -- on top, but not really, no, but it was still good to make Jim cry and gasp and shudder underneath of him even if it was what Jim wanted to do. Hastily-made collars and tethers, the post-brutality come down, sometimes tender, sometimes worse than the sex itself. Fingers digging into some new hole in his body, prying at some cut, and Jim wondering what sticking his dick into a bullet hole would feel like, when Sebastian could only muster vague disgust in response. He'd had Jim up against a wall after that, Jim laughing the whole time. Fuck, Jim'd marked him inside and out.

Seb closed his eyes for a moment. "Well, he doesn't have much reason to not try and extrapolate past tense to present tense."

"And that is what we will be working on changing, though I know it will not be an immediate process." His Benefactor looked at him seriously as their food was brought to the table. There appeared to be a lot of sausage and bacon for a start.

Seb leaned back, and started to unroll his knife and fork. He threw the waitress a casual enough smile as she poured his coffee for him, but then stopped paying attention as he reached for the sugar. "If you have any ideas, I'm game." Getting Jim into custody was something Mycroft was aiming for, while Seb had stressed that Jim Moriarty was better dead than alive, no matter how much a person valued his brain. "Everything's sort of... fucked up right now."

"We are not going to fix this overnight," Mycroft said. "I am advised that we should find a secure area and take some time re-establishing normality."

Seb reached for the coffee cup, and took a careful sip before starting on the scrambled eggs. "So, I'll go run some obstacles courses and you'll put in a week's work in a day and Paul'll come in and want to strangle us both?"

Mycroft partially smiled. "Apparently so. No, we will return home and get used to each other again. Paul will need help, so will the both of us. I do not know exactly how that is going to work but I am sure between us we can come up with some ideas."

"We never really did normal to start," Seb pointed out mildly. He was sure Mycroft had people out to get Jim, but the fact that that loose thread was hanging was... annoying. Irritating. Jim didn't like loose threads. 

He shifted his leg a little under the table, peering up at Mycroft. Good memories, he needed to focus on good memories. Not ever present ones, but good ones, the ones he went to when things got bad. "Any good books to recommend? I'm behind on my reading."

"I am sure that we have a library worth," Mycroft said. "And films." He was eating as if he had just rediscovered food and realised he was hungry.

It was good food, plain but cooked nicely. The eggs were a little salty. He could try his hand at cooking a couple of things when they got back home. "Yeah, but are any of them *good*? You made me into a picky film watcher."

"Perhaps that is something we should do together. I have not done much... recreational activity since I have been without the two of you." Mycroft admitted.

"I'm not sure whether hunting tigers counts or not." He leaned back in the booth, tilted his head back over the edge while he looked up at the ceiling. Crappy little baffle tiles that probably didn't do as much for insulation as it did for sound containment. "Then we'll read and watch movies and try to figure out who were are again. I know you're not *actually* your job."

"Currently there is not much proof of that," he replied. "Sherlock has been scathing in his commentary."

"I think Jim wanted to skin him and crawl inside of him. Apparently scathing is the new sexy." He rubbed a hand over his face, and picked up some thick toast. "I'm sorry it took so long to find him."

"You have nothing to apologize for. I could say the same. It was nothing short of a miracle you found him, then even more so that you retrieved him and John alive." Mycroft ate another sausage. 

"John saved him. I don't..." Seb paused, and chewed for a moment. "I can guess what happened to his leg. I, he hasn't had an easy time, if he's managed to stay sane."

"I admit to being concerned. It won't the first time it has happened to him, but by far the longest." Mycroft did look concerned.

"I'd like to hear that story," Seb said, taking another sip of coffee. "And Jim... Jim's masterful at what he does."

"Unfortunately, that is the truth of the matter. It is a source of astonishment to many agencies that one person, one brilliant person could have such an impact," he replied. 

"Why is it a shock to them? You have that kind of impact," Seb pointed out quietly. "Imagine if you just said fuck it, and turned sides."

"Mm, it suits them not to see the extent of my influence, and I prefer to be underestimated," Mycroft said. "Also, I encourage the appearance that Sherlock does his own thing. If they connect the two of us as working together, it is possible they might panic."

Seb snorted quietly, and ate a little more. "Well, he *does* do his own thing. You two get on like a house on fire, unless I missed something."

"Complete with the shouting and yelling and threat of imminent disaster, yes," Mycroft said with a faint quirk to his smile.

"Mmm." He reached for his coffee cup, took his time enjoying it. It was sort of crap coffee, but it was *coffee*, and it was familiar. "Before all of this happened, was John all right?"

"Devastated by news of your death," Mycroft said. "Particularly as my brother showed the impeccable timing of the Holmes' and told him just before his Presentation."

He half-way choked on his coffee. "Oh, excellent. But John's been all right other than that? I wasn't, there wasn't much opportunity to talk, and then he took a bullet."

"I believe he has been an excellent influence on Sherlock, and very well respected as an army surgeon," Mycroft answered.

"And he's been happy, yeah? I don't really think excellent influence is a good benchmark. I was an excellent influence on Jim." Seb pulled a tight frown as he ate a bit of sausage. "We were pretty happy."

"Mm. I can't tell you that you weren't," Mycroft said. "I don't know the extent of what happened between you but I am sure that Moriarty is very capable of engaging emotion."

He glanced up at Mycroft, and kept frowning. "I meant you and me and Paul. Happy and excellent influence aren't the same. I didn't particularly influence you at all, but I liked it all the same."

"I was very happy indeed with the both of you," Mycroft said. "You influenced me more than you would know."

More than he'd ever apparently know, given how much information Mycroft tended to never volunteer. He let silence settle for a few minutes, while they finished eating, picking through the refuse of what had been a very good meal. Seb lingered over coffee, got a re-fill and sweetened it up again, watching Mycroft's hands. He'd never used them to inflict pain on Seb. If anything, the man was a bit of a hedonist. 

He wasn't sure how he felt about that. There had been times where it had been so goddamn good nothing in the world had existed except for Jim, etched into his mind. He wasn't sure how to come back from that.

He was halfway through that second cup of coffee before he offered, "So, I think I picked up some disturbing sexual habits while I was away."

"Indeed?" Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "Do you wish to elaborate?"

The restaurant had probably heard worse -- it was on a base, after-all, and there really wasn't anything that was too early in the morning to talk about. "I think... No, I know I have a masochistic streak. And I'd love to rape you in the shower sometime."

Mycroft raised his eyebrows a little at that. "We will have to look at that. I am afraid neither prospect appeals to me."

Seb gave a slightly shaky laugh, and finished off his coffee. "Yeah, well. Jim wasn't a good influence on me."

"Who has been a good influence on you?" Mycroft asked seriously.

"I don't know. It's not like I've really gotten around?" He'd had a pretty narrow life in a lot of ways. Met a lot of people, lot of colleagues, lot of acquaintances, and lot of corpses. "You and Paul and John have really been it."

"Then I will ensure that you see as much of myself, Paul and John as possible," Mycroft promised.

"That sounds good. I." Seb twisted the empty cup in his hands, watching Mycroft. "I've sort of lost a hold of myself."

"You have been in a... untenable situation for an extended period of time Sebastian," Mycroft said. "I am not going to expect you to suddenly be fine after the experience."

"It mostly didn't feel that bad at the time. I didn't have a lot of room for reflection. It was just sort of. Getting on." He left the cup alone briefly. "We should probably get back, see if Paul's all right."

"Indeed. You can see John as well. Sherlock reported he regained consciousness last night," Mycroft said getting out money to pay for their meal.

He finished off another bite of sausage, and shifted to slide off of the bench on his side. "Good. Paul wouldn't have survived if it weren't for John. I never would've looked in that base if John hadn't broke Jim's nose."

"Then we have something else to be grateful to him for, as well as keeping Paul alive," Mycroft said getting up. "Mm, that was very satisfying. I must stop missing breakfast."

"You should stop missing meals." Mycroft left more than enough money, and Seb pressed down the bizarrely present urge to nick it, tucked his hands into his pockets, and fell into step with him. He'd done nothing with Jim except pick up bad habits.

"It has been all too easy to do so. At least Sherlock has been unable to make comments about my weight," Mycroft said. "Things appear more manageable after a good meal"

"It helps," Seb agreed. The sun was just warming, comfortable as they started towards the billeting again. "I, uh. What I said earlier, I wouldn't do. I'm not." Well, fuck. "I haven't lost all self-control."

"I know," Mycroft said. "I have no concerns on that score."

It was strange that he was so confident about that when Seb was not completely sure himself.

"Great." Great. Except all of those urges were there, lingering behind his eyes, knotted up at the back of his neck. It was easier to walk with Mycroft, bypassing the billet to head to the hospital, still on foot. It was more footwork than he'd ever remembered seeing Mycroft do, and it was still faintly disorienting to see him out of his three piece suits.

* * *

Everything was faintly disorientating, and strange and right now he couldn't see how that was going to change.

"Hey. You awake there, or do your eyelids just do that anyway now?" That was a halfway familiar voice, a good familiar. "Sherlock's in the hall with Mycroft. Figured I was safe enough to leave here with you."

John opened his eyes properly. "Seb!" He beamed automatically, the painkillers making the expression a little over the top but no less genuine. "You tall bastard, get over here...”

Seb gave a quiet laugh, and leaned in to half-hug John mindful of his bad arm, the bad shoulder. "Did you get shorter while I was gone?"

"You know how it is when you lie horizontal, you look shorter," John hugged back as best he could, feeling stitches pull painfully but not giving a shit. Seb was alive and here and they were home. "Jesus, still getting over the fact you are alive."

"I think we both are," Seb said, mouth close to the side of John's head. He sat back. "I was trying to find Paul. And if you hadn't punched Jim, I never would've..."

"Well, we were trying to escape as well," he said. "And if I'd know he was more than Dr. Jim when I hit him I might not have done that." A hundred memories of their time as Companions together crowded in his thoughts. "Kinda like that time in Self-defence practicum when Wilkes came up behind you..."

"And completely regretted it when I flipped him?" He leaned back slowly, looking at John with a weird expression. "So Jim was the doctor who mentored you."

"Yeah. Completely freaked me out," John instinctively reached out to try and tug him closer, the intervening years of separation slipping away in the face of a childhood of close companionship. "He went there to spy on me to see how I might relate to Sherlock, I guess... maybe he was aware of you then."

Seb rubbed at the side of his own jaw, but he let John manhandle him in closer, putting an arm around him comfortably. "He completely played me."

"I got the impression that was just what he did,” John looked up at him, studying his eyes, his expression and really did not like what he saw. "He screwed you over big time didn't he?"

He'd missed Seb's self-aware sorts of grins. "Every waking moment, yeah. It wasn't bad, not really. I fell into it all... really easily. I burned a lot of his plans, big areas of the empire but... He's out there somewhere. He'll rebuild. Fuck, that's the fun part of it for him."

"We'll get him, problem is, Sherlock is going to get obsessed about it," John answered completely sure of that. That was a future concern and Seb was a current one. "I missed you. I really, really did."

"I bet Jim'd like that." He shifted again, pressed his forehead against John's. "I missed you, too. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about the timing when I went after Paul, I just needed to find him."

Yeah, and that was a complicated relationship there, from what Sherlock had told him. Mycroft Holmes, the untouchable ice-creature, and his body guard, and his companion.

"Is he good to you?"

"Sherlock? Yes... well, I could stand a bit more sex, but you know," John smiled a little. Sherlock would get absorbed in something and sex was secondary. And the actual companionship was great. Easy and relaxed, and they just melded. Some days, it was like he'd stumbled across another part of him. Because Sherlock had certainly shed a few pieces of himself over the years. 

"Good. I like Sherlock, but I was worried for you." Seb replied meeting his eyes for a moment before skittering his glance away.

"You never said much about you and Mycroft and Paul..." John asked a little tentatively. "I took it things were a bit... weird. I mean, you didn't even really hint about it in letters."

"It was a bit weird." Seb shifted, leaned back a little. "Paul was... Well, here before me. And Mycroft said from the start that I was going to go undercover for him."

"Kinda missing the point of Companion there wasn't he?" John said. "Mycroft does seem pretty reserved. Compared to Sherlock I guess. Mind you Sherlock is, well, more in your face." Very present, very forceful. He had a strong personality, but there were a lot of spaces for John to step up and fill, places where Sherlock was just ghastly and needed someone else to support him. 

"Yeah, he is. The whole coming home thing was actually pretty horrifying, in retrospect. It settled out, but... When Paul went missing. There wasn't really any option but to go find him."

Paul held them together then. John could read between the lines. "I know," he said. "I get that.” He exhaled a little. Even drugged up he could see the marks that being with Jim had made on Seb's behavior. "You talked to Mycroft about what happened?"

"A bit. Round about. How's your shoulder?" His eyes moved to look at the area that John felt was possibly completely over-bandaged.

"I'll let you know when I can feel it through the drugs," he said recognizing that as Seb speak for 'not really'. "I can't believe I didn't fucking feel the moment I got shot. I always thought soldiers who said that were being... you know, complete macho."

"We were *running*," Seb pointed out, "And you probably came closer to death then any of us are comfortable with. I was going in there with the intention of waterboarding some brilliant whatever Jim'd picked up."

"Well that would have been fun," John said wryly. "But you didn't. Jim thought he'd turned you completely, but you went from that to instant escape plan."

"It was you. And Paul. It never crossed my mind to do anything but an about face." And get them out. He didn't know how Seb had ended up going with them -- he'd missed that part of the trip.

"I think you weren't meant to, from what Jim said. He boasted about his Captain..." John exhaled. "In retrospect, the taunting made more sense." Like many things Moriarty had done it had a twist only he could appreciate until the target figured it out.

Seb's expression twisted a little, and he shook his head a little. "Yeah, well. I wish I could say whatever his boasts were weren't true. But they probably were. How long were you there?"

"Four months." It had felt like forever, just him and Paul, trying to take care of him. "I… bargained my doctoring to get help for Paul. He was... well he was dying when I got there. That might have been why I was taken, I'm not sure."

"People were only taken on Jim's orders. You were taken as part of the greater scheme. Paralyzing Sherlock, maybe. I don't know." He had fingertips lingering against the side of John's neck, and started to slowly rub at John's scalp, almost absently.

He didn't say no to that either because Sherlock rarely sat still long enough to provide that sort of comfort. "I figured that." He relaxed a little. It was nice to be touched. "The two of them are circling each other."

"I'd rather keep them from meeting each other. Jim plays to leave no loose ends. Even a mostly thwarted plan is still unbelievably devastating." The massaging was new, but it did feel good, and to not feel entirely afloat on drugs and nothing else.

"We'll work on that," John said. "And Paul. Paul seems together but... well you probably know what Jim could do. Better than anyone."

Seb exhaled, a very careful motion as he nodded. "It, uh. Jim left a mark. He reminded me of Sherlock in a lot of ways. He could just take someone apart, every factor of their life. And then he'd use it against them."

"Yeah." John remember those meetings with Jim. It was the sensation of being slowly dissected, thought by thought and him tossing out distractions to postpone the process. "I get it. They'll let us talk won't they?"

"Who?" Seb glanced up to the doorway, the narrow little wire opening. John turned his head a little -- got his scalp massaged in a slightly different spot, and that felt bloody relaxing. He could see the back of Mycroft's head, and Sherlock's face, then his shoulders moving out there. "It shouldn't be a problem? I don't see why it would be." 

Except that Sherlock was a bit bitchy about keeping his John-time when he was interested in it. There was that.

"I mean, I'd like to actually… spend time. Like we used to," John said. "I fucking missed you. Not just when you were meant to be dead."

"I spent a lot of time wishing you were around," Seb half-laughed. "It's probably unhealthy. There was a lot of fun things I wanted to tell you about, too, that you missed." And no reason he couldn't tell John then just then, even if John wasn't going to remember much. He might. He was pretty sure he could hold onto a thought.

"The Headmistress would be scandalised," John said with a smile. "I want to hear all that stuff, all of it."

"The Headmistress would be shocked by all of it." Seb sat back again -- anxious, moving, restless -- but his fingers lingered against John's skin. "I'll tell you about it. Later, when we get to London. It all feels like a distant memory right now."

With his good arm, he absently reached out and his own fingers found Seb's hand. It was more a soothing unconscious gesture of exploring the texture of his skin. “Everything feels a bit like that. Especially after Afghanistan. Crap, I wonder if anyone has told Janet I was rescued?"

"Told who?" No, probably not. He let his hand wander a little, not looking. John could feel the rippled texture of a scar that wrapped around Seb's right wrist, thick and warped. "I can see that she finds out, if you give me a last name."

"Dr. Frasier at the command where I was stationed," John said trying to figure what had caused that. Something cutting in, like wire or plastic.

Seb pulled at his hand, against John's slightly their fingers. "I'll make sure she finds out. Anything else lingering?"

"I don't know... How is Paul? Was the operation okay?" John asked hopefully.

"They were looking at the surgery site when I went by to see him. He's alert, and it went well." Seb's eyes went up to the door, and then he leaned back as it opened, pulling in on himself. 

Sherlock came through first, or at least, his voice did. "It's not my job to clean up your messes, my *dear* brother."

"That is not what I said Sherlock," Mycroft sounded actually angry. "I requested that Sebastian and John have time together."

John could see Sherlock building up for another response and hastily cut in. "Sherlock. Sherlock, I'd like to see Seb. Actually, frankly I'm going to see Seb, no matter how much you sulk but not because he needs a babysitter for god's sake. He's my friend, I thought he was dead, and Sherlock if I spend time locked up in a flat with you seeing no one else, murder might be committed."

He watched Sherlock open his mouth, and then glance at Sebastian. And then John. He was doing that working it all out thing, and reached out to flatten John's hair where Sebastian had been rubbing. "You're just going to complicate your issue, Mycroft. But, fine. At least John's *safe* with him."

Safe. What did that mean? John raised his eyebrows a little at Sherlock. 

"Then we will ensure that John has access to come and see Sebastian when he wishes and that Sebastian has permission to visit Baker street when he wishes," Mycroft said.

"Thank you," John said sincerely.

Seb was quiet, getting up from the chair. "We should probably leave you alone right now..."

"Yes, yes. Go see Paul." Sherlock made a waving gesture, and Seb moved around the edge of John's bed. "Ugh, please stop looking fondly at John. Give me a bit before you start on that."

John just unrepentantly grinned at Seb. "See you later Seb," he said giving a little wave just to annoy Sherlock. "Tell Paul I miss him too."

"I will." He turned into Mycroft when he reached the man, putting a hand on his side.

Sherlock sat down in the now empty chair, looking imperious and concerned around the eyes. "How's the pain?"

"Yeah, not bad," John replied watching Seb as he left. "Thank you for allowing that Sherlock." Even if he had been forceful about it, it would have been difficult if Sherlock had said no.

"Mycroft thinks this will fix his actual problems. I have no issue with you seeing Sebastian. I was quite aware of your relationship when you came home." Sherlock folded his hands together thoughtfully. "Which is an added complication."

"Wait, what?" John looked at him. "What relationship? Why should being friends be an added complication?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and slid his fingers back behind John's ear, before rubbing at his scalp in almost perfect mimicry of what Seb had done. It felt just as good the second time around. Mostly it made him think he'd kill for a good, long, proper bath. "You had an exceptionally close relationship as Companions. I'm rather sure you had a few experiences with him that went outside of practicum. You certainly fell back in together without any awkwardness, probably smoothed by your military experience and also having a Holmes as a Benefactor. When I saw him a few months ago, I told him you wanted to see him again, and that he needed to remember that."

He was oddly affected by that. "Did you know he was alive before I was taken?" he asked suddenly. That felt very important somehow.

"Yes, though the period between the two events was three days. I didn't have time to come back to the base as far into the mountains as I was."

He could understand that. It was a relief, because somehow the thought of Sherlock knowing and not telling was unbearable. "Okay...okay, right. Thanks. Look you've probably figured out a lot about us but, Seb and I... don't exactly know how to explain it. We grew up together. We trained, we worked, we messed around together." And it was possible that he loved him more than he should.

"Childhood sweethearts," Sherlock offered, and was that a teasing note? "I don't particularly care, but you see why I called it a complication for my brother."

"I'm not sure why it should be," John said. "I would think it would help. Seb needs stabilizing."

"You were held captive for four months, and you want to help prop up your friend." Sherlock exhaled. "That's unbelievably generous and stupid of you. You need to take care of yourself as well."

And scared shitless most of the time he was there, holding it together for Paul, using him as a focus.

"I didn't get tortured like they did," John said. "Just ...mental mind games. I was doing okay until I got shot in the escape."

"Mind games can be torture." Sherlock was watching him, hand curving down to his shoulder. "You were very brave, John. And your actions saved two lives. And, I still think you should write that amputation up for a journal."

John looked at him. "Sherlock...that is something I still wake up in a cold sweat about. I'm not sure if I can be objective about it," he pointed out.

"There's a large body of research on the long term benefits that comes from going step by step through a traumatic event and documenting it as soon as possible. It can mitigate PTSD. It wasn't a double blind study, of course, but the research was rather compelling."

John smiled a little. That was Sherlock's way of expressing concern. "Fine, thank you. I'll maybe look at it when I am out of hospital."

Sherlock gestured vaguely with his phone. "I don't suppose you want to squint at the screen."

"Why?" John asked. "What do you want me to do?"

"Read? I've been reading on PTSD, and the psychology of undercover operations, and companions. It's a very washy science, but the literature is compelling." He started to pass John his phone. "You can read yourself to sleep."

"Okay, I'll read myself to sleep," John promised. He probably wouldn't remember much of anything anyway and it would make Sherlock happier.

Sherlock sat back with a pleased smile on his face as John curled his fingers around his phone. "Good. You're stuck here for a few more days, so we'll make the best of it."

Sometimes Sherlock was easy to please and sometimes not but John always tried his best even if he literally did fall asleep very rapidly.

* * *

Mycroft had a veritable list of phone calls to work through, so Seb had begged off to try and see Paul. To get himself a little space, to try to work out what the hell he was doing and what he was supposed to do. He didn't know what came next, and nothing was really... catching. That morning, talking with John had felt almost normal; Paul had been harder to see, and their short visit with Mycroft had felt... Seb didn't know. He was keeping himself reined in and wrapped up.

He had a feeling Paul was too, or holding something back at least. He seemed to be lying in his bed with his arm over his eyes for some reason and his breathing was not matching his posture. It seemed unsteady and uneven.

Seb closed the door quietly behind himself, and stepped in towards the bed. "Hey. Thought you might like some company."

There was a flinch, almost automatic and he could see Paul literally draw himself together as he took his arm away from his face. "Hey Seb, yeah, sure come and sit down here."

"You don't have to..." He slipped into the chair, slouching. "Hi."

"Don't be daft, of course I want to see you," Paul said. "I was just… thinking."

"Yeah, I was just thinking, too. You were Jim's captive longer than you knew me." He'd been with Jim longer than he'd been with them. It all just felt strange, jangled on his nerves. "I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner."

"Seb... fuck, don't apologize for that," Paul said looking at him. "You and I both know what he was capable of and the fact you would be the last person he wanted to know where I was."

"With good reason. He knew why I'd left." Seb folded his arms over his chest, watching Paul's expression. "He." Fuck. Seb clenched his jaw hard, and let himself just look at Paul. It was a miracle he was alive. "I'm sorry."

"Get your ass here," Paul beckoned reaching out towards him. "Seb, you were fucking amazing out there. I'm incredibly proud of what you've done. Don't forget it. Stop beating yourself up about this for god's sake."

"What did I do? What the fuck did any of that accomplish? I..." Did everything Jim wanted, just like he did everything Paul wanted, just like he did everything Mycroft wanted. Didn't question, didn't stop, just did it, and worked it out later. He moved in reluctantly closer, and let Paul reel him in. His hands felt thin, weak against Seb's shoulder, and he wanted to fix that, too, as he leaned in to loosely hug him. 

"What did I say was the most important thing about your team? Knowing that they would be looking for you. That kept me alive," Paul said. "I didn't want that to happen to you, but I knew you'd end up coming and I tried to stay together for that day, okay? Plus, you did get us out. You did find us. Lucky John punched Moriarty, but you were the one that sprung us. Because John was up next for the conversion treatment. What did it accomplish? You took down the biggest set of crime and terrorist networks at once since the dawn of the bloody intelligence department... or had you not realized that?"

He shook his head slightly, focused on the feeling of Paul. He smelled like antiseptic, but very faintly that familiar heat. "I also helped expand it."

"Yeah, that's what deep cover is about," Paul said. "Done it myself, but not for the really big fish you hooked." He looked at Seb. "You got to be competent to rise in the ranks, and that means... doing what you did."

"You don't know what I did. I didn't rise through the ranks -- Jim interviewed me, and I stepped into the position." Then he'd had to establish himself as all right within the organization, pushing down, but most everyone had been happy to have someone else dealing with Jim before them.

"Even more pressure to be competent then. Or he would have killed you," Paul commented. "He certainly killed people before for minor things - heard the others talking about it."

"He did. For being stupid, or annoying, or not fast enough, or not amusing." Seb leaned back, watching Paul's face. "I don't know how much of himself he inflicted on you."

He could see the struggle on Paul's face. "...all of it." He said eventually. His mouth twisted into a forced smile. "You can probably read it on my skin."

Marks on his arms, marks on the higher parts of his chest, but then there were sheets and blankets and he wasn't sure. He smoothed fingertips over a jagged mark on Paul's shoulder, catching sight of the ragged scar around his wrist. "I'm sorry."

"It wasn't you," Paul said shifting awkwardly. "And I know he treated his friends nearly as badly as his enemies so... you know what I talking about. What he liked to do."

"Yeah, I do." He's managed to scrounge up a long-sleeved uniform shirt, because Mycroft had kept *looking* at him and it was annoying. Just then, it was easy to turn up the cuffs on his own, showing a matching scar. "I think I would've preferred cuffs to the wire loop."

Paul’s fingers ran over the scar. His expression seemed to waver between anger and upset. "I don't care what Mycroft says, I'm going to kill that little fucker with my bare hands."

"I'd watch." Seb felt his mouth twitch a little, and turned his wrist over, fingers lingering against Paul's skin. "As long as he's out there, he's dangerous."

"As long as he breathes he's dangerous, and possibly after," Paul spat out. "Jesus. How he even thought of some of that stuff..."

Seb gave a shaky exhalation, hand still lingering against Paul's arm. "Companions have endless creativity. Add that to a sick imagination, and it's really effortless."

"Are you going to stop thinking you did nothing Seb?" Paul asked after a pause. "Or is asking you that is like me dealing with my leg?"

"There isn't anything there to deal with?" He gave a slow blink, waiting for Paul's response to be more than a twitch of fingers. "What next?"

"On previous experience? A whole load of Mycroft floundering in guilt, nightmares, flashbacks and Post Traumatic stress," Paul answered. "Trying to remember stupid things like how to use a goddamn shower without freaking out. Oh and obsessive planning to revenge myself."

"Who would I revenge myself on? Jim? I was a willing participant." He scooted his chair in closer, until his knee jammed up against the side of the hospital bed. "What can I do to help?"

"Don't let me destroy the house when we get home. Tore some of the rooms apart last time," Paul said. "And...We’re going to have to watch each other when it comes to Mycroft. It's easy to start blaming him."

Paul'd probably done it last time. Seb closed his eyes. "I might help you tear a couple of rooms apart. I don't know what to do with Mycroft." He didn't know what to do with Paul, but at least he knew what'd been going on. Quite well.

Paul huffed a laugh. "Yeah, welcome to the rest of humanity. No one knows what to do with Mycroft, especially at the moment. He's... he doesn't react in predictable ways and has a genius for saying and doing the wrong thing at times like this. Put him in charge of a country and he's golden. Here, personal relationships? Not a chance."

"Yeah." It was something he could do. Try to help Paul, work on supporting Paul. He'd spent so long in Jim's damn pocket, being *his* companion. "Hopefully I don't fuck it up too badly before we get you home."

"Not going to say you won't because you're going to have exactly the same sorts of problem," Paul said and exhaled. "You seen John yet?"

'Yeah. He's all right. Upbeat. Sherlock's agreed to let me visit, and the other way around. So he'll be coming over. Might help you break down some shitty old bookcases. Who needs antique furniture, right?" He rubbed his thumb against Paul's arm, just feeling skin, wasted muscle.

"Gonna have to start working out before I can take that down," Paul said. "John got me back to some sort of able to move.”

"You kept up better than I think I would've if our situations had been reversed." He didn't know if he'd been down to one leg, if he would've been capable of pulling off a run like that.

"Kept trying to escape," he said. "Jim put a fucking steel bar through my ankle and chained me to the wall with it. Goddamn thing was rotting off."

Seb licked his bottom lip. "They do that with foxes they use to bait dogs." He wasn't sure if that information was significant or useful or a metaphor tucked into a metaphor, but he always had to be very aware of things like that with Jim because he liked to layer and tuck meanings in meanings in meanings. "We'll get you back to strength."

"Hopefully," he said. "I want to kick your ass on the obstacle course again. I want to be able to sleep in the same bed as you and..." He seemed to choke back a shuddering breath.

He stretched his fingers against Paul's skin, kept the contact gentle. "And...?" He didn't even know what he wanted. He liked the sound of it, liked everything Paul was suggesting, he just couldn't think of anything himself.

"I want not to screw up what we had," Paul said. "I want to be able to have sex again."

He gave a quiet noise, mostly thoughtful. "I don't think Jim put me off sex."

"I think that would have defeated his purpose," Paul said. "I'm no Mycroft but I know he was trying to make me give up, have me broken and then get you to come in when he was sure of you and put me out of my misery."

"You didn't seem to give up," Seb pointed out quietly. "And I suppose Jim was never sure of me." If John had turned, though. What would he have done then?

"I was... close to it," he said. "Very close. I was hell to be with then." Paul shifted, still holding his hand.

"John says hello, by the way. So you couldn't have been that hellish." He was hard pressed to think that Paul could be hell to be with.

"I was miserable, depressed, and angry and lashed out sometimes. I should have been looking after him," Paul said. "God, can't wait to be able to have something to drink."

"Can I get you a juice or something? There's a vending machine..." He was pretty sure Paul had to ramp up to full amounts of normal food, but. Juice was healthy, right? "I wouldn't feel too bad. He does live with Sherlock."

Paul actually laughed at that. "Yeah good point. A juice would be good."

"You probably made it feel homey." Seb shifted, let go of Paul's hand. "I'll get you an orange juice. You have to be tired of water." It wouldn't take but a second, and it was really the least he could do.

"Sick to death of it now," Paul said. "Orange is good." He leaned back watching him.

He slipped out of the room pretty quickly, and jogged down the hall for the vending machines. They were up on John's floor, but not near John's room. He fished into his pocket for some change, managed to get it to take, just because it wasn't really the kind of machine he felt like taking the time to shake down. There were probably security cameras as well.

Seb made it back to Paul's room in what felt like record time, with a nice cold juice still sealed in hand.

Paul was still looking up at the ceiling. "Thanks, Seb." He took it from him and slurped it. "Mm."

He settled into the chair, comfortably. It might've been better if he could've stayed all night, right there. At least he knew what to do, roughly, right there. It was where he fit in best, easiest. "I picked up a liking of a lot of different fruits, as drinks. You guys might have to put up with me in the kitchen for a while. I took to cooking as a defensive mechanism. Jim'd live off of crunchie bars and cocaine if I left him to it." And stupidly expensive wines.

"Yeah? What can you cook now? You were pretty good before. I'd kill for something decent. Mind you even hospital food is tasting pretty good in comparison to what I was living off," Paul said.

"Yeah, I hate to say it, but I think food deprivation wasn't even on purpose. Just... 'Oh, yeah, that thing Seb's always nagging me about'. I picked up a lot of South American, and a lot of Middle Eastern things. Plus, it's a great way to get in someone's good graces -- compliment their wife on the meal and really honestly mean it because you haven't eaten in a day and the Palao -- you know, with fried raisins? -- is the best thing you could imagine eating." He was pretty sure if he tried frying raisins back in the billet, Mycroft would be alarmed.

"You can cook anything for me. Just hearing about it is making me drool. How are you on those spiced meat casserole things?" Paul asked.

"Pretty good. I'm not sure what I can do from like shit I find at the convenience store, but I could try. Bring it 'round for breakfast," he offered pretty seriously.

"I think that nurse might kick my ass. But holding you to that when we get home. Mycroft needs it too." Paul paused. "Never known him not eat before."

"It's a little disconcerting," Seb agreed. "I got him to eat breakfast this morning, but..." But, Mycroft had been affected by their being gone. 

"Don't let his formal speaking fool you. He gets worse at that the more stressed and upset he is," Paul murmured. "He's like a goddamn talking dictionary at the moment."

"He ran me off because he had phone calls to make, supposedly." Or he wanted to have a nervous breakdown with no witnesses. It was probably a bad idea to leave him alone just then. Either of them. Paul was hanging on by a thread, where Seb knew he could just sort of. Keep getting on.

"Oh he'll be making phone calls. He pulled this shit before. He went all in on work last time there was a big screw up. Every phone call became life and death," he said. "He believed it too."

Right. There went the plan to stay all night in the hospital room. "Okay. Then I should probably go back and try to break him of that. Do you want anything else? A book? Packet of crisps? I'd give you my cell, but they confiscated it."

"Can't concentrate yet," he said and patted his arm. "Tell Mycroft we both want cells, then I can annoy you with texts."

"I'll do that, yeah." He exhaled, and then leaned in for a moment, just to press a kiss against Paul's cheek. It was stupid, Shit he wanted to. "Let me help you, all right? And I promise not to do anything stupid."

"Got no problem accepting help from one of my team," he said. He didn't flinch away." Look after Mycroft for me."

"You do a better job of that than I do." Seb stood up, lingering a little, and then nudged Paul's water glass closer to him in case he wanted that as well. Team. Yeah, sure, team. He'd fucked up Cee's hand, and would've killed all of them in slow order if he had've thought it would get him Paul back. Paul was more than team to Seb, but. Well, Fuck. Nothing he could do to change anything. "Night."

"Night Seb," Paul said. "See you tomorrow. Hopefully they'll ship us back to London soon."

"Yeah. I'll sneak you some breakfast in the morning." Coffee or something, maybe. A little cup of good coffee, to go, could go a long way. He didn't linger by the door, but left, closing it quietly behind himself again. 

Team. That was breathtakingly painful to consider, and he didn't even know why. It was easier to just shove it back with everything else, and wave to the nurses at the front desk on his way out, to enjoy the fact that it was dark outside, but there was too much light pollution to see the sky, as he walked back through the semi-spotty coverage of orange street lights. He stopped at the convenience store, bought a pack of cigs and a cheap box of wine because it appealed to his sense of humor, before he headed back to the barracks and their billet space. Mark was lingering in the shared sort of living room, laptop on the table. "You been out at all since I left?"

"Nah, not been anywhere," Mark said, sitting back. "And hello to you too. Decided to speak to me now?"

The edge of his mouth pulled up a little. "Sorry. It's all been sort of awkward in my head. What do you say, really? 'Hi, back from the dead. Sorry about that.'"

"That'd be a place to start," Mark said with that familiar easy grin. "Not like I didn't know you were alive. I did have to do the debrief on Cee."

"Yeah. That was... Unfortunate." He could only guess what Mark thought. "Hesitation wasn't really an option."

"She was fucking lucky it was you. She got out of there alive and without being kneecapped. Mind you she was convinced you'd turned." Mark said.

"She still convinced I turned? How'd her hand heal up?" Little bits of information he wanted to know. Couldn't change, but wanted to know.

"Not so much now. Mycroft sent her to a specialist, got it fixed, although no finger print on that finger," Mark said. "Will pissed her off by telling her people paid good money to get that done."

Seb nodded a little. "And Will recovered, too, then? How much of the team is still around..."

"Not been running as a team since you and Paul... uh... yeah." Mark shrugged and then grinned. "Here's something you'd never guess. Will's been having this weird on again off again thing with Laura."

Seb squinted a little, trying to imagine it. "Never saw that coming, not really. How 'bout your personal life?" It was almost normal, Seb supposed. Two blokes catching up in the barracks.

"I have a deep and committed relationship with my right hand right now," Mark answered with a melodramatic sigh. "Couple of spectacular one nighters but that's been it. Cee and I... well, yeah, she’s wobbling around everywhere right now. Last I saw her she was chasing Caffrey again."

He whistled quietly, and tucked his free hand into his pocket, plastic bag rattling. "I'd give you tips, but I'm not allowed to dispense relationship advice. I'm going to try to seduce my posh benefactor with shitty white wine. *Box* wine. Caffrey's all disgustingly slick. Jim thought he was a poser of the worst order."

"You seriously think you are going to get Mycroft to drink that shit?" Mark asked raising his eyebrows. "Best of luck on that one. You can re-bond with Cee with tales about Caffrey the poser. She'll love that, though she still might try and kick you in the balls."

"Yeah. I might put it off a couple of weeks, then. We had a meeting with him back in India, actually. She'd get a kick out of it," Seb mused as he rubbed fingers along the edge of his jaw. "If you want to go find some food or something, Mycroft isn't going anywhere."

"I'll take my break when Steve comes in," Mark replied. "Got a shitload of paperwork to work through. Any time you get bored you can give me a hand. Mycroft is still working...see if you can get him to go to bed or something."

Yeah. They hadn't slept but for a quick cat nap after breakfast, but Seb was really good at getting by on little to no sleep. Once you passed that oh god, I can't live like this, I have to close my eyes stage, it was almost all right. "That's the general plan. I've developed an aversion to paperwork, so..." He lifted his poor alcohol choice, and turned to the closed door to Mycroft's room with a wave. “Night."

He didn't knock, just pushed the door open without really looking around before he shut it behind him. Mycroft was sitting at the table, phone positioned squarely in front of him. "Hey."

"Ah, Seb," Mycroft acknowledged his presence, looking up from the laptop. "What time is it?" He did seem distracted and weary looking in the light of his screen.

"About 8." Seb set the box wine on the table -- mostly because it amused him. Jim would've been laughing by then, at his audacity, at the layers of innuendo and unspoken jokes. "Paul was doing all right, but I figured you could use some company." 

Mycroft looked at it and raised his eyebrows. "And company comes with cheap wine?” he asked. "I'm glad Paul was doing well. Hopefully we will be able to have him flown back to London in a few days. And I assume Sherlock will do the same with John."

"Mmmm. And yes, company comes with cheap wine. The box claims it tastes of pineapple and mango, so I'm guessing Sangria without the fruit or the brandy.” Seb paced away from the table a little, grabbed two of the cheap paper cups that were stuffed in a plastic bag in the corner. "I meant physically well. We're. I know what he went through. I know what Jim did, what Jim liked to do. He did it to Paul, too, so..."He opened the box, unscrewed the stupid spout and dispensed a cup's worth that he held out to Mycroft. "I have no idea what normal feels like any more."

"We have all had differing experiences. Different habits," Mycroft sighed and picked up the cup, looking at it suspiciously. "I really can't believe I am going to drink this.”

He was going to drink it, though. And that made Seb want to smile a little. "It won't kill you. It was also the best the shoppette had to offer." He dispensed a cup for himself, and lifted it in half a toast to Mycroft. "To surviving, I suppose."

"Surviving, and living," Mycroft raised his plastic cup and practically grimaced as he drank. "Good lord. They are heathens." But he still held the cup out for a top up.

"Soldier quality wine," Seb smiled as he refilled Mycroft's glass, and then his own. It lingered, too-sweet and a bit tannic on his tongue. "If it's any comfort, Jim also failed to make a wine snob of me, probably more spectacularly than you did.” It was easier to pull out a chair, and sit diagonal to Mycroft, legs stretched out toward him.

"There are restaurants that wouldn't cook with this," Mycroft said. "Mind you, I could never get Paul to appreciate wine. Whisky. Yes, he developed a taste for expensive malt."

"Duty free shop," Seb decided as he slouched comfortably in the chair, elbows on the chair arms, cup in hand. "Paul said he misses his cell phone. He's going to be impressed when he sees how much better they've gotten."

"Mmm. Technology moves on. Perhaps we should get him an iPhone. What type were you using? We can go and buy a decent model tomorrow for the two of you." Mycroft sipped at the wine, the wince lessening the more he drank.

"HTC Android. Lots of different Sim cards." He made a throw-away gesture, which was probably obvious to Mycroft. "Hacked, too. I liked it." Mycroft still had his blackberry. Seb took another sip. "So, my brand's a mess."

"I guessed Moriarty would feel the need to... expunge it somehow," Mycroft said. "Do you wish to be re-branded Seb?" He was drinking more of the wine than Seb was and Mycroft was a notorious lightweight when it came to drink.

Seb took another drink, a little more relaxed about it. "I would, yeah. Maybe a different location." Little less painful. Or the same location on the other side, and a lot painful.

"I don't think it needs to be concealed as much," Mycroft said leaning back in his chair as well. "But wherever you want it."

"Shoulder, maybe." He didn't know what he wanted to do anymore, or what he *would* do. Still, either way it didn't seem to matter. Nothing really seemed to matter. Seb rolled his glass between his hands for a moment. "Do you even want to keep me?"

Mycroft paused. "When have I ever given you the idea that I do not want you back?" he asked sounding slightly... hurt by the suggestion which was not like Mycroft at all.

He wanted to say that it'd started with the idea that he never really wanted him at all. But he swallowed that, because Mycroft did sound wounded. Seb took another swig of his drink instead, and leaned over to refill it. "So the run free part of the old plan isn't still in effect? Because it never actually interested me."

"I thought I had explained that my initial flawed thoughts about your position as Companion were abandoned," he said. "Let me spell this out. I do want to keep you, I want you to be my Companion, and that is the most important thing of all."

That was better. That was, that wasn't inferences and innuendo, because Jim'd fucking lived on inferences and innuendo and the worst assumption Seb thought up was always the *right* one. He finished his glass, and stood up. "Bed?"

"Your ploy is transparent Seb," he said, but he was two glasses down and a little blurry. "But I am tired, it is true."

"Yeah, there's no point in trying for complicated with the likes of you. I'd like to sleep with you. Or sleep with you. Either's fine, and we can resume drinking that shit in the morning, if you like." Mycroft was still seated, which made it easier to lean into him, hand on his shoulder.

"I think I have forgotten how to sleep," Mycroft admitted. He smiled a little. "Very well, I can deny you nothing."

"You probably could," Seb murmured, leaning in to kiss Mycroft lightly. He just... Wanted to compare the reality to the memory.

There was a certain familiarity about the almost surprised hesitancy. "Mm." None of the toe curling passion but that comfort was there. Something he remembered distantly.

He'd missed comfort, and toe curling was a little overrated. It was nice to linger, sliding his hand to curl behind Mycroft's neck before he pulled back a little. "Bed."

"I... all right, bed it is then," he said getting up slowly. "I'm stiffer than I would like."

"That's not a double entendre, is it?" He helped Mycroft up, lingering as they wandered the short distance to the small cupboard that was the bedroom.

"No..." he chuckled a little. "No, simply from not moving around enough. I got the impression you might shun contact after Moriarty."

"Why?" He could sort of follow that train of thought, but he'd gotten pretty accustomed to Jim leaving him completely breathless and shattered feeling, hollow, sometimes. It still felt amazing.

"Because I am assured that is a common reaction," Mycroft said. "But then again perhaps you do not react in the common way."

"I'm not saying everything's... perfectly fine." He nudged the door open with his shoulder. "I just got used to it."

"Then you should get used to not being used," his Benefactor said looking at their bed. "I shall be grateful to be in the bed at home. This is not exactly generous."

"I've been sleeping on stone floors and sleeping bags. With a maniac." He nudged Mycroft toward the admittedly narrow mattress. "Paul misses the bed at home, too."

He undressed slowly. "This is unheard of, going to bed this early. Usually I work late into the night."

Seb started to unbutton his shirt. "We could not-sleep, too, you know. Or just talk."

"Would it be wrong to just feel you?" Mycroft murmured. "I don't want you interpreting it in anyway, I just... want to touch you."

"Yeah, that'd be all right." Seb half folded his shirt, and started to take off his boots. "I think I'd like that?"

"I hope so." Mycroft slid rapidly into the bed, letting the duvet drape over him. He patted the bed next to him.  
Seb undid his cargos, and lifted the bedding to slide in beside Mycroft. He was warm, and the room was a bit cold without clothes.

It was a little awkward but Mycroft was automatically close to him, arm tentative around him. "You are thinner than you should be."

"Pot, kettle," Seb murmured. The awkwardness and the tentativeness was maddening, and familiar and comforting at the same time. "Don't worry, I can rectify that quick."

"That should be interesting. My brother will no doubt comment. He is another who forgets to eat." He hands were moving over his skin, slowly as if trying to read a message in the scars.

Fingertips lingering against his ribs. Seb closed his eyes for a moment, and hunched into Mycroft, his own hands shaky for a moment before he could focus. ""Again, pot, Kettle. I've seen Sherlock, he's a rail."

"It is part of his manic energy. I am much more… static," he said. "Tell me if something makes you uncomfortable. I would prefer it to you trying to endure for my benefit."

He gave a quiet laugh, and turned his head to nudge a kiss against Mycroft's jaw. It took a little shifting to settle in more comfortably, but it felt good, easy and warm. "I've never stoically endured." He'd fought Jim tooth and nail some days.

"Perhaps it is not your style," Mycroft murmured, stroking down his back.

He exhaled slowly, fingers lingering at Mycroft's sides. It was simple, just stroking and lazy contact, but it felt damn good. "Yeah, I don't plan to stoically put up with anything..."

"All these marks..." Mycroft sighed nearly to himself. "I'm sorry Seb, I truly am."

"I don't know if we should do anything," Mycroft murmured. "I can tell you want to."

"You think I'll crack up." Well, the bad news was he already had. Probably a lot. Given that everything felt disjointed and numb at the edges, what was the harm?

"I am not sure if you will or...I will," Mycroft replied. "It has been a long time for me."

He could almost hear Jim rolling his eyes and muttering, 'oh, play me a tiny fucking violin.' The words were there, too, but he bit his own tongue and turned his head a little, pulling back to peer at Mycroft. Mycroft, here's my bodyguard, he'll do you, Holmes. "I'm sorry, I'm still trying to process that. You'll have to give me a minute."

"Who else would I sleep with?" Mycroft said very matter of fact. "Even if I had the desire, the circumstances are such that it makes it nearly impossible."

"I don't doubt you, but..." Seb shifted in closer, breaking eye contact. He learned something new every day, apparently. Shifted his leg a little against Mycroft's, comfortable. "It isn't like you don't know me."

"This is true," Mycroft answered moving his hand experimentally over his skin.

"If it's what I said earlier, I'm not, I *wouldn't*..." He was content to just lounge there. Shit, they still both had underwear on. It wasn't like he even planned to try to get one over on Mycroft.

"I told you I am not concerned about that. I find myself in the position of not knowing how to take a first step," Mycroft admitted.

Seb shifted, squirming free of Mycroft just a little, urging him to lay on his back on the too narrow bed. "Let me take it, then." It shifted the sheets back a little, but that was all right.

"Only if you are sure," Mycroft agreed quietly. "You don't have to."

"I'm sure of nothing," Seb offered, sliding a hand over Mycroft's chest, shifting so his knees were on either side of the man's hips.

He didn't stop him, and he guessed very few people would turn down a blowjob. Nothing wrong with that and a good way to ease back into things, surely. 

It was easy to fall into it, leaning into Mycroft to start easily with kisses. Just, lingering kisses while he worked a hand down Mycroft's stomach. Too skinny, too many changes he was still cataloging since the last time. He kept the duvet partially in place over their hips, at least for the moment. It was chilly.

Mycroft was never overly demonstrative, but he did at least react. Possibly it was the wine that was lowering his inhibitions but he seemed to be enjoying it.

Quiet sighs, and his hands were on Seb, touching his arms, his shoulders as Seb started to kiss his way down. He sucked a spot on Mycroft's neck to the sound of a shaky breath in his ears, shifted down, knee sliding slowly. He kept constant contact with Mycroft with one leg, focused on it. Mycroft's legs were long, and the key difference from Jim was oddly grounding as he slid a thumb over his benefactor's left nipple.

"You have not lost any skill," Mycroft murmured. "Beautiful..." It was strange to hear that. Jim had tended to other things in pillow talk.

It was less exploring and more re-acquainting himself. He'd been very familiar with Mycroft, once upon a time that felt a very very long time ago, and maybe that was Mycroft's dissonance. Seb had changed a bit, too, and there was apparently room for melancholy in sex. Wrong wrong wrong. He pressed his forehead against Mycroft's chest for a moment, breathing as he curled his hand against the man's hipbone, refamiliarising himself with the less prominent but still familiar curve of his belly.

"You don't have to...” Mycroft said stroking his hand through his hair. "You will be mine no matter what Seb."

He groaned a little, eyes closed as he swallowed and focused on breathing. "I've been fucking a complete maniac for two years, I should be able to do this with someone I love." He could damn well do it with a complete stranger, too, though Jim was fairly possessive of his toys. His heart was ramping up, and that wasn't how sex with Mycroft went. Sex with Mycroft was like being drowned in heat, slowly. The hand in his hair felt good, though, so he held the position mostly, shifted his knees back to half-lay on Mycroft. "Fuck."

"No, Seb...there is no pressure," Mycroft murmured. "Come up here. I am glad that in some ways you think of me as different to him."

He stayed that was for a moment, because moving felt a lot like admitting defeat in what was really a fucking simple task that he usually enjoyed. Mycroft's hand on his shoulder was faintly insistent, so Seb shifted, pulling the bedding back up around them. His heart was still going, racing, and it was stupid to feel that way just then. He curled back into Mycroft stubbornly. "This is..."

"This is normal," Mycroft said and there was soothing stroking touches. "Seb, this is a normal reaction. And it will change, it just needs a bit of time."

He closed his eyes. "No, this is a fucking bizarre reaction. It's safe here." And he was fine under worse worse worse situations. Maybe it was lack of sleep. Too long a day too many days in a row.

"And you are relaxing a little and you probably haven't done that for nearly two years." His Benefactors said. "It will feel abnormal, I know."

"Fuck." He gave a hard exhalation, pressed his mouth against Mycroft's shoulder, because it was such a frustrating feeling. Mycroft was probably feeling work withdrawal.

"You can do whatever you want to do..." he said softly. "You are mine, you will always be my Companion."

"That's annoyingly understanding. Tone it down a little." Seb mumbled against Mycroft's shoulder. "Do you have any good books with you?" Mycroft usually travelled with one or two. At that point, Seb decided he might as well go find it, bring the rest of the box wine in, turn on a light and read over Mycroft's shoulder.

"Several," he said and smiled a little. "I apologize for being too understanding. Would you like a thriller or an expose on the Cold war?"

"Mmm, cold war." Seb started to stand up, shivering from the cold air on his skin. Mycroft's bags were back in the main room, so he took the two steps toward the bedroom door. "What's it called?"

"Cold War: Building for Nuclear Confrontation. I believe it is by Cocroft," Mycroft said. "It has its moments."

It probably did. He wondered what he and Jim had done would do to all of those treaties and carefully balanced pacts. Mycroft would probably walk him through it all, too.

He pushed the bedroom door open, and half startled to see Mark standing there, tidying up a little. It left him glad he'd left his fucking pants on, and there wasn't much by way of activity to hide. Fuck, he was used to Paul being everywhere, but Paul was part of it. And he'd been Jim's bodyguard, but it still struck him for a moment. There was Mark, in the little office space Mycroft had in their billeting. "Hey. What suitcase has the book pile?"

"Light reading huh? Dark blue one," Mark gestured. "I told Mycroft to get a goddamn kindle but he likes the actual books."

"Kindles and ipads don't have the right weight. The smell's all wrong. I don't want to play games or screw up the stock market in between pages." He headed for that case, and unzipped it quickly. There were a couple of fictional thrillers, but he'd been living thrillers and everything still felt shaky and on edge.

"You carry on," Mark said yawning a little. "Mycroft reads his books too fast."

"Always has." He pulled the heavy, boring seeming tome out, and grabbed the box wine and the cup Mark hadn't gotten to throwing out yet. "Really, you can go. Mycroft's fine." The fact that Mark had moved one room closer in was just. Yeah. They didn't quite trust him. 

"Hey, it's my job. I'm the responsible one remember?" Mark replied. "I'll be out here for however long it takes."

"You moved rooms," Seb pointed out. "And if you get any closer in, you're going to be in the bedroom and I'm sort of... Let's not make this any more awkward."

"Fine, I'll go back to where I was," Mark said raising his hands in surrender. "Get back in there then."

Seb flipped him a mock salute, before returning to try and settle with Mycroft for the night. It wasn't feeling comfortable or at ease but Seb was pretty sure that with enough wine, the awkwardness would be drowned out somehow.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I have no idea if this is even real. Or if I just snapped and I'm still there dribbling on the floor with my leg rotting the rest of my body, and stinking so much it makes me gag."
> 
> And he had no idea how to do it. No idea how to get past that, if Paul meant it. There was very little Paul said and didn't mean. "If that's true, is it really so bad?"
> 
> Paul looked at Seb for the first time, half surprised and then almost looked like he was getting a fit of hysterical giggles which was just completely weird. "...aren't you meant to try and make me be real about this shit?" he asked. "No, it's, hey delusion is great let's go with that.”

Getting back to London had been amazing. Rain had been shocking enough that he had stood and looked at it for a long moment once they got outside and then got told off by Sherlock for being an imbecile and courting pneumonia. He was well enough now that he was allowed to have his shoulder immobilized by strapping although rather bizarrely he had started a limp in his left leg that completely flummoxed him.

Germany had been weird in a lot of ways - Seb had been jittering around, constantly apologizing and twitchy as an addict going through withdrawal, and Paul... well, he had to admit he'd found it difficult to face him having amputated part of his leg. It had been his decision, his implementation and he was constantly wondering if he could have saved the limb somehow. As a consequence he had not spoken to Paul much in Germany expect to say 'hi' and how're you doing? and surface pleasantries that seemed odd considering what they had talked about when they had been locked in together for months.

Still, 221B Baker Street was aired out and he had been puttering around and today was the first of the agreed visits from Seb. "Conjugal visits," Sherlock insisted on calling them even when he threw things at his head. There was no awkwardness with Sherlock. John had almost expected awkwardness, but it hadn't surfaced, almost proof of Sherlock's unflappableness. 

"Are you planning on staying in?" he asked, looking over the edge of his microscope.

"I'll see what Seb feels like doing," John said, randomly tidying things up. He was slightly nervous for some reason. In a way, it was his home. In another way, he'd never felt the urge to impress Seb before.

"Take him out for a walk and a cup of coffee. He'll want the illusion of privacy. He's cagey when cornered."

"I know that, but he shouldn't feel cornered here," John said. Seb probably would talk more just to him that much was true. "But you're right about the privacy."

"I know," Sherlock drawled as he adjusted what he was doing, and wrote something down. "I'll be here watching the news."

"I thought you were going to call that Benefactor in the Met," he said raising his eyebrows. “See if there was something to keep you occupied?"

"I will. I'll call after I've seen the local news. Solve a case for him as a hello -- it leaves more impact." Sherlock leaned back, seemingly satisfied with whatever he was peering at. "You should probably start reading up on laws so we know which ones I run afoul of."

"...Let’s just say pretty much all of them?" John answered with a smirk. "At least anything involving public decency."

Sherlock snorted, and leaned over to look at the next sample. "We've never broken any of the interesting ones." The bell rang twice. "And there we are. Get your coat, take your phone with you."

"Yes Sherlock," John said as a sing-song tone. He managed to pick up his coat and phone and wallet. "See you later."

He made it to the door, managing to drape the coat around his shoulder. "Hey Seb," he said opening the door, genuinely pleased to see him.

Seb looked a little thin around the eyes, his hands tucked into the pockets of a canvas coat. John could see the edge of a too-bright plaid, and he was wearing clean jeans, clean boots. Sherlock would've remarked that Seb was trying to impress as well. And that he had a month fresh wardrobe, care of Mycroft. Not all of it, though the coat looked broken in and worn. "Hey. We headed out?"

"Apparently. Sherlock suggested it. Wanna get a coffee or go and find something unhealthy to eat later?" John said smiling at him. It was good to see him again.

"Coffee sounds good. Do you want to walk, or...?" There were places not too far. "Or we can do coffee and something unhealthy at the same time."

"Yeah, let's walk a bit.” His leg could manage it. "I don't mind either way, we can just uh chill. It'll be nice just to be out."

"It is, isn't it?" Seb waited for him to shut and lock the front door, loitering closely. "How've... How're you doing?"

"I'm doing okay, with a few quirks," he said with a one sided shrug. "How's it been with Mycroft and Paul? How's he doing?"

Seb waved a hand back and forth a little. "Healing up well. We're all sort of finding our footing again." He took the side on the outside of the street while they started walking, and he was constantly scanning. "It's been two years. It's not easy."

"Yeah, I can imagine. Must be like tiptoeing over broken glass." He shrugged a little. "What about you? "

"I don't know. I've spent more of my life with Jim than I did with Mycroft and Paul. I..." He shrugged again. "Maybe giving them some alone time together will help."

"Yeah but would it have helped you?" John said. He nudged Seb a little. "C'mon, if you get into that time thing, you and I have spent 10 times more time in our lives with each other than any of them."

Seb gave a quiet snort, and nudged back, infinitely gentle when he did so. "Yeah, and you're not a criminal, either."

"Well, there was that time when we nicked the Headmistresses portrait," John replied with a grin. "And you know, rules were somewhat...bendable."

Seb bit at his bottom lip, looking thoughtful as he kept scanning. "Well, those were pranks. I don't even know where to start with Jim's level of criminal. You'd understand."

"Seb I'm not trying to compare anything," John said. "And I did spend a significant amount of quality time with Jim. I've got an inkling of what his level was."

"Yeah." Seb exhaled, and seemed to stop when they reached the end of the street, looking left and then right as if deciding where to go. "So, there's coffee, or there's a pastry place that does all right but not great coffee."

"Don't mind," John said. "Coffee is good for now. How long have you got?"

"Until you tell me to go home." Seb shrugged his shoulders, and started to head down the right, as if that was where good coffee was found. Maybe it was. Seb tended to learn an area, and when would he have been that way before? Before John'd come home, probably with Mycroft looking for Sherlock, maybe? "Doesn't really matter."

"Well, glad you know where you are going. Sherlock has hardly let me out of the damn flat," John replied. He was taking on board what was said though. Seb had issues.

Which wasn't really a surprise. "Paul and I came over this way a couple of times. Paul liked coffee. A lot." And maybe they couldn't get a hot cup to go, but if they had good beans, John bet Seb might get a pound of it to take with him.

"I like a smooth coffee. And tea, though tea in Afghanistan didn't taste like proper tea," John said,

"I liked the tea." He shifted his shoulders, scanning the street still, glancing at John and then back out and then back to John. "Paul got me spoiled for coffee. Two different pots, an espresso machine... I suppose Mycroft's kept it somewhere. Should try making some."

"He'd probably appreciate that," John said. "You know, you're not my bodyguard. Relax a little Seb." Classic post-traumatic stress.

"We haven't found Jim," Seb reminded quietly as they kept walking. "And he likes to pay people to do his dirty work for him. I'm nervous."

"Sherlock and Mycroft are keeping him occupied," John said confidently. "For now at least. You need to relax." Besides, Jim wouldn't be content with just killing them, he knew that much.

Seb veered a little, towards a shop door with a little canopy that hung over it. Not much good against rain, but at least it wasn't raining. It was just a bit brisk. Seb pulled the door open for him. "Yeah, that's not going so well."

"Yeah, I can see that," he replied, just managing not to bash his shoulder. "Anything I can do to help with that? Aside from encouraging you in your cigarette habit."

"I get Mycroft going with his own habit when I do that." Seb waited for him to get inside before following in. There was something low playing on the radio, unobtrusive, and the place seemed warm and decent. "I tried to seduce him when we were still in Germany. Fantastic failure."

"Wow, bit soon?" John half commented, although he was partially envious. Sherlock was refusing to do anything until his shoulder was out of a sling.

"Complete failure," Seb reiterated. "Panicked, ended up halfway through a book on nuclear treaties before we fell asleep sitting up." But it sounded like he wasn't rejecting his Benefactor, or the other way around. That had to help, at least a little. "You?"

"Medical rest being enforced," John grimaced. "Like I don't know my tolerances. I'm allowed to sleep in the same bed but...then Sherlock goes off in the middle of the night."

"What, to like read a book?" Seb peered up at the chalk-board menus mounted on the wall behind the register. "Paul used to just leave. Nightmares. Now it makes sense to me."

"God only knows what he is doing sometimes. I come down and he could have been doing anything from reading to simulating a car accident using the couch.” John said and glanced around. "I'll order. What do you want?"

"Something hideously sweet." He shrugged, hands still in his pockets. "Caramel Macchiato sounds right. As many espresso shots as possible. So he's gotten into police work?" 

"Well, he's meant to be showing off to a Benefactor in the Met while we're out so, I think he might do a bit of free-lance," John said. "Anything with it? Cake? Bagel, cookie of chocolate doom?"

The edges of Seb's mouth tugged a little, and he looked sideways at John for a moment. It was an oddly normal expression to see on Seb, even if it didn't last. "Cake, then. If you're offering." 

"Oh, I see, going to make me choose then," John said and went and ordered the ridiculously sweet macchiato with extra shots and a full on creamy latte cappuccino with a vanilla shot for himself. He topped it off with a large slice of coffee and walnut cake as well and they went and sat as they waited for it to be brought over. "So everything still feeling weird then?"

"Yeah." Seb tilted his head down, shoulders hunched for a moment before he slouched into the chair more comfortably. "Everything Jim told you... was probably true."

John looked at him and then poked at his arm to get his attention. "So, what you're thinking, shit, John's going to never what to speak to me again or something? I know it's probably true. "

"Not quite. You're nicer than that." Seb shrugged, stretching his legs out under the table. He unzipped his coat, so clearly he wasn't going to flee to the door. "Anyway, you're talking to me now."

"Yeah, I am. You were under cover, end of story." John shrugged and then winced. "Moriarty was one of a kind." And not in a good way.

Seb shook his head. "You can't just hand wave it all away as undercover, John. It just doesn't actually work. I've tried."

"Fine, I'll hand wave some of it," John said. "The rest I guess we talk about as and when it comes up." He didn't want to poke the hornet's nest until he had to. He was pretty sure it was going to be poking a hornet's nest. Or like throwing a rock into a bee hive. A big rock.

"I'm still glad you punched him."

"Yeah. I nearly crapped myself when I connected Jim the doctor with the Boss," John said. "I'm glad you saw us and didn't think twice about getting us out."

"Why would I have? You..." He shook his head slightly, and glanced over his shoulder to look towards the counter, scanning around. "It was you and Paul. And Jim'd been keeping you. There were no other options."

"Well, that's the part of what Jim was saying that wasn't true," John responded as the waitress brought over their drinks and cake. "Thank you. Yes, he was pretty sure his Captain was... his."

"There was nothing in my life to contradict that." Seb pulled his coffee in closer, and took a sip. "Oh, that feels like diabetes. I've missed that."

"Hope you like coffee cake. I think you could get a buzz just from the icing," John said. "Mm not bad. How did you find this place?"

"I came here with Mycroft. After visiting your brother. It was sort of a treat, I never really spent a lot of time alone with him. Or out of the house. The team always thought I was Paul's." Seb picked up a fork, and nicked an edge bite of cake. 

"Some weird strategic reasoning I guess," John said. The coffee cake was good and even now sweet things seemed like a treat. "Mm. Mind you, Paul is a really great guy." And exactly the type who pushed all the instilled Companion buttons.

"He really is. He didn't get it, being a companion, some days, but... I missed him. A lot. He made everything bearable."

"I think he found the point when I told him you were dead more painful then when I had to do surgery," John said. "I just blurted it out."

"You really thought I was dead?" He asked it quietly, taking another sip of his coffee.

"I kept being shown proof," John said. "I kept denying it but even Sherlock couldn’t prove it. I was gutted Seb, seriously. I saw the CCTV recording and...”

"Did that on the fly," Seb admitted. "I suggested it to Mycroft, and held my breath a bit, hyperventilated for a while."

"He had it doctored some," John said. "With convincing detail that I poured over obsessively. Mycroft is a better actor than I would have thought. He seemed genuinely distraught."

"We just lost Paul to a setup that he'd helped cause. I..." Seb cradled his cup as he looked up at John. "I came in after walking Mark through the systems, and he's sitting there with a handgun. He was seriously considering killing himself, because of what'd just happened with Paul. How... anything seemed reasonable enough to try to find Paul and bring him back."

"Jesus Seb," John said shuddering at the thought of Sherlock contemplating suicide. "That right there... he was that close?"

"Yeah." Seb gestured a little with his fork, and took a bite of cake. "I think if I'd been a few minutes later with Mark, he would've. I could follow the logic there. He blamed himself for a setup, he'd lost his lover. Why not just kiss it all goodbye?"

Because he had Seb. "He had a reason not to," John said gesturing at him.

"Yeah, bullshit," Seb murmured. "If I'd been good enough, he wouldn't have -- it wouldn't have gotten that bad. Paul was... Really a choice for him. And Paul was always stupidly tolerant of Mycroft, where I just, I did the best I could by going to *find* Paul. And I couldn't even do that right."

"Yes you did, don't make me throw things at you," John said. "You keep saying that. You found us, got us out. If you hadn't, I probably would have experienced Jim's form of induction."

"It's all standard grooming shit." Seb slouched a little more. "And by the time he's done, you just don't give a fuck any more. I should've gotten Paul back faster, I should've broken the whole thing before we moved on that ship, and I should've..."

"And how were you mean to do that?" John pointed out. "At that point no-one knew of the connection between Jim and Paul. We didn't even know the organization existed."

"We knew *an* organization existed. We suspected it was the big one." And somehow, Seb'd found it and gotten into it, which was a miracle all its own. And he just didn't seem to be getting how big a deal that was all by itself.

John looked at him steadily. "Okay, here's the set up. There is a suspected organization. No one has proved its existence though they have tried. An operative gets a connection to the nearly mythical organization, manages to get into the confidence of the overall Boss...and that doesn't strike you as worthwhile?"

"The boss is still out there. I did a lot of horrible things. That I just can't shove in a fucking box," Seb said quietly, still holding onto his coffee cup. "I can't... I don't know where to begin to make up for what I did, I don't know what to do next, I don't..."

"The boss is out there yeah, but Sherlock says they've made massive inroads into a lot of organizations," he said. "I get you can't let yourself off scot free."

"It doesn't matter if they've made massive in roads. He'll rebuild himself. He'll start over. It's fun for him, not devastating." He took another sip of coffee, still sitting back from the table.

"The difference is this time we know who he is and how he works," John said. "Seb, it makes you the most valuable person of all - you know how he behaves and how he acts."

"I'm probably sitting here right now as bait," Seb murmured, the edges of his mouth pulling up. "And I have no bleeding idea."

"Well here’s hoping he doesn't want you right now," John said. "And that he's busy doing whatever the hell he likes doing well away from us."

"He got used to having someone to pick up his pieces. It might disorient him a bit." He took another bite of the cake, and seemed to take his time then. "I hope. Uh. Anyway." He cleared his throat. "What're you going to do now?"

"Try and persuade Sherlock that I can actually do something aside from rest my arm and talk to him," John replied. "See you with any luck. Maybe we should plan a few things to do or something." 

"Make a list of public places you want to see me act awkward and cagey in," Seb joked quietly. "Couldn't hurt. What would you like to do? It's London, there's plenty out there, just…"

"I know Sherlock and Mycroft have absolutely no interest in poking around town - Sherlock thinks he knows it all," John said. "We can make a list of stuff we both want to do. Some point I've got to buy new clothes. I look like I'm wearing a tent now." 

"Yeah, I dug down to stuff I came here with. It's sort of not good when you're fitting into stuff that's a couple of years old, you know?" Seb had gone lean again if he'd ever bulked up properly in the interim. "Shopping's on the list, then. And more food places, I think. When do you get the sling off your arm?"

"Two and a half weeks, then I get to do some physio on it, make sure I get mobility back," John answered. "Although my leg is playing merry hell with me. Sherlock thinks it's psychosomatic expression of what I'm feeling traumatized about." He didn't feel particularly traumatized, and people kept remarking on the fact, so maybe it was unusual. 

"And what're you feeling traumatized about?" Seb took another sip of his coffee, and leaned forward, an elbow on the table as he nudged the cake closer in towards John. "I did notice the limp, but I thought you might've rolled or cracked an ankle somewhere on the run."

"No bloody idea," John replied. "No, I've had it since I got shot. They thought I'd thrown a clot or something but there's nothing visible that they can see. I don't feel particularly traumatized. I'm sleeping well enough I think, but that might be the drugs." He faintly remembered vivid images and sense memories and maybe it was all repressed or something. He stole a bit of the cake. "Anyway, odds are with it like that I won't be allowed back in an active warzone. Which means the end of my surgical career I guess." 

"How exactly do you figure that? I wasn't aware the only surgeons in the world were military folks. It might take you a while to find a placement, but London's a big city and someone'd want you. Hell, Mycroft has doctors on staff, in the organization. It's next to military, but there's health waivers." Seb took another sip of his coffee, mouth lingering at the edge like he was breathing it in more than he was tasting it. "He's still filing the paperwork to get me shaken back out of the cupboards."

"Well, I feel bad about it because Sherlock seems to have decided he can't be military intelligence anymore," John said and shifted his arm. "And the military route was a way to get into the surgical track. There are hardly any Companion surgeons."

"And, you're in the surgical track now," Seb pointed out. "So, look for a hospital that'll let you keep on. It doesn't seem too hard..."

"Yeah, but there is Sherlock," John grimaced. "He's... well he's not good when he's bored.”

Seb reached to nick another bite of cake, mouth lingering on the fork as he looked thoughtfully at John. "Then you try to keep your licensing up and you get used to living out of each other's pockets. Get something part time that won't hate you."

"Maybe. I could do some shifts at one of the local hospitals in their A&E," John said thoughtfully. "Perhaps I need to think about doing that and helping Sherlock too. I mean, he likes having an audience who can follow how brilliant he's being if you know what I mean."

"I do." Seb set his fork down, and settled a little, twisting in his chair. "Jim was like that. He liked having someone to show off to who could *follow* what he was doing."

"Yeah. Sherlock has these. Well, it's depression basically," John said. "Complete plummet down into the depths sometimes."

"Oh, yeah." Seb nodded in understanding that was just. Yeah, John had to admit, it was a little surreal to see Seb nodding like that about *Jim*, more than say, Mycroft or Paul, or someone John was comfortable thinking about in that way.

"Mmm. But in the meantime, he's being a bit weird around me. Over careful and considerate," John said. "Like, tiptoeing around me some of the time which is completely not him."

"You were missing for four months. He missed you. Hopefully, he was scared for you." Seb tilted his head back to look up to the ceiling. "And I have no suggestions, because I'm handling my problems like shite, anyway."

"Any ideas what would help you handle them better than shite?" John asked half seriously.

Seb exhaled, and set his coffee cup down. "Not a one. So you should probably take my advice with a grain of salt."

"Mm. I like your advice usually," John smiled. "I like being able to do this though. See you. I mean, I'm really lucky...most Companions don't see much of their classmates."

"Technically you haven't really seen much of me." Seb shrugged his shoulders slightly, hunching forward again. 

Back, forth, back forth, even sitting down he was squirming like hell. "But I missed you. You would've had fun with some of the shit we did, with Paul, with... yeah."

"Tell me about it," John said. "That stuff. I want to know what I missed." And they could get more coffee if they had to. He just needed to get Seb talking again.

Seb shifted again, pulling a leg up, knee comfortable against the table. "All right. Let's compare travel notes, then, and start there."

* * *

He dropped John off back at the flat in one piece, after dark. But safe, and in one piece. They'd gotten take away from a decent place, and John'd gotten extra to take home. Seb had circled back to the coffee shop -- he recognized that the place was closing for the night, but he still ordered three coffees to go, nice things, and had a couple of pieces of cake boxed. They needed to get Paul out of the house, but he was angry about the wheelchair while they were waiting for the prosthetic. It wasn't something Paul really wanted to take out and about, and it left Seb wondering what he'd've done if he'd been in the same position. 

He liked to think he would've angrily embraced it, gotten the most fucking tricked out wheelchair possible, and just rolled with it -- hah -- but he wasn't sure. He had all his fingers and limbs attached, and he wasn't really feeling all that all conquering.

It had been good being out with John. There was something rock solid about John that allowed him just to stop twitching. He was the complete opposite of Jim in temperament and association. He knew where he stood with John, and coming from an extended relationship where Jim might at any second do something randomly life threatening it was a bit of a relief. 

He delivered Mycroft his coffee - still working upstairs in his study office, and was told that Paul had taken himself off to his room earlier.

"I'll stick my head in and see if he's still up and wants any." It wasn't like it was a lot of caffeine; it was warm and sweet and settling for Seb, and that was what he associated with coffee. He lingered, watching Mycroft glance at his phone, and then left. Yeah, Jesus, he had no fucking clue what to do.

Mark was busy talking to his team and he was glad Mark had turned into a bloody competent chief of security. But he had coffee to deliver and Paul enjoyed coffee and cake in a big way and this would be a treat. 

Stealth was a habit now - living with Jim made it necessary unless he wanted to be stalked continually, so coming up to Paul's room he was silent.

And he heard a strange choked sound that half paralyzed him with uncertainty.

There was time to turn back. It would've been the easier choice -- to not press, to not carry on. To stop and turn around and let it happen without him. Give Paul his fucking space. He lingered by the door, quiet and still, and touched the doorknob carefully before he pushed it open. Didn't even creak.

"Paul?"

He saw something he never thought he'd see. Paul sitting in the darkness of his room, head in his hands, shaking with racking nearly silent sobs, the stark contrast of one foot reaching the floor and the other truncated immediately apparent.

He set the cake down on the bureau inside the door, but kept the cup of coffee in hand as he moved after a hesitation to sit beside him on the edge of the bed. There wasn't any point in trying to say anything, and no useful mindless platitudes popped to mind. There was just nothing there for him to offer, except sliding an arm behind Paul's shoulders.

It was a sign of how far gone Paul was that he didn't even seem to notice. When he did, he shuddered and choked out, "Just... go... go away," in a tight, thick voice.

He shook his head a little, because if nothing else, he was impulsive. And life was better when he followed those stupid impulses. "No."

"Fuck off," Paul said. "Just... fuck off.” Even his tone sounded shaken. "Just, I don't want you to see me like this... please."

"See you like what?" Seb's voice broke at the edges, and he leaned into Paul, still holding onto the coffee with his free hand. "What'm I supposed to do, go back to my room and keep pretending it's all great?"

"Isn't that we're all doing?” Paul was trying to get a hold on his voice but the gasps broke up his words. "Isn't that the fucking soldier way? Suck it up and fuck it up?"

It hurt. It hurt to hear Paul like that, hurt to feel his shoulders shake. "Got the last part right. It's not working, though. Is it?"

"It's work about as well as my fucking left leg," he said with a hint of anger starting to leak through. He looked down at the truncated limb. "All I was, was how good I was at physical shit. Now look at me."

"Yeah, you were never a good leader, trainer, perfectly scary fucking strategist, nah. Into the trash heap with you." He stretched his fingers, and pressed the coffee cup into Paul's hand. "Christ. You'll be walking around soon. Sooner than you have any right to."

Paul felt icy cold, almost as if he had gone into some sort of shock. "Fuck. I can't fucking sleep, I haven't got a thought in my head that isn't fear and you think I'm going to be good for anything? "

"Can't be like this forever. C'mon, you hung on this long... Why?" He kept his other hand curled over Paul's fingers.

"I don't know..." Paul said unable to look at him. "I don't know. Mycroft. He..." Seb knew exactly what he meant. To do all that to come home to a lover who would rather sit upstairs in his study than deal with this.

It didn't work in Seb's head. Mycroft had been really going to kill himself, and now that he had Paul back... It didn't make sense to him. Most days, Mycroft didn't make sense to him. He tilted his head in, pressed his mouth against the fabric of Paul's t-shirt at his shoulder. "Yeah. But for two years, he didn't have you standing behind him telling him not to be an idiot. He didn't have me throwing fits because he was acting like an arse. Two years of wondering where the hell we were, and we were in hell."

"Yeah, I.” Paul tried to control his breathing. "I'm sorry Seb. You should never come after me. I can see what he did to you and I'm not worth that."

"Bullshit." He was holding still, not reacting. It was easier to not react, because he'd mostly forgotten how to react, because that was a horrifying fucking risk, breaking the mask. "Just writing you off wasn't ever an option." Even if he was just 'team', that was okay. He swallowed, fingers shifting over Paul's. "C'mon, have a sip. It's salted caramel. It's hideously sweet. They swore there's espresso under there."

He needed the sugar, Paul was shaking and freezing cold, looked like he had been hyperventilating from what he could see. Eventually though, he took a sip. "Jesus Seb, what's in that stuff?"

"Chocolate, caramel sauce, salt, espresso. Milk." He deadpanned that, still sitting there with his arm around Paul's shoulder. "Raspberry syrup. Possibly cocaine, I'm not sure. I did stop watching the Barista very briefly. There's cake as well."

"Jesus..." It was almost a shaky laugh but Paul drank some more. "Coffee, I dreamt of coffee." Paul still being stick thin was very disturbing. He was used to him being solid and immovable.

Jim did that, though, played with the key components necessary for life. Food, air, movement, the five senses. "I wish I'd known you were in there. I wasn't suffering for good food..." And of course, he'd brought Paul the most bastardized cup of coffee known to man.

"I know. Wish I'd known you were there too. But. Mycroft had decided he didn't want you deep undercover after all and...” Paul exhaled, some of the shaking still there but calming.

Seb ducked his head down again, still close to Paul. His leg was pressed against Paul's at the thigh, and his own calf posed a strange contrast to Paul's lack on that side. "Yeah, I just found that out. Go figure."

"He's a stupid wanker sometime. I told him to tell you, but he didn't want you to think you weren't going to be valuable to him," Paul said. "I just thought I'd have time to tell you myself. Never found the right moment."

He shrugged his shoulders, and otherwise didn't move. It was easier to watch Paul, read him, and fall into watching every motion. His eyelashes moving, his eyes raw and red-rimmed, scars that hadn't been on his face before. "Wouldn't have mattered. I ended up being just what Jim was looking for. As per the original plan."

"I'm so sorry." Paul inhaled sharply. "I, I feel like a goddamn stranger."

"You're still Paul. It's been a while since you got to be you." A while since he'd gotten to be himself, too. "At least you're not a mass murderer."

Paul looked at him and burst out laughing in a strangely tight almost hysterical way. "I wish I could say that. You really think he passed up the opportunity to break down every single thing about me?"

"I don't even know what he was breaking," Seb murmured. "So. We'll build you back up."

"You make it sound easy," Paul said. "I have no idea if this is even real. Or if I just snapped and I'm still there dribbling on the floor with my leg rotting the rest of my body, and stinking so much it makes me gag."

And he had no idea how to do it. No idea how to get past that, if Paul meant it. There was very little Paul said and didn't mean. "If that's true, is it really so bad?"

Paul looked at him for the first time, half surprised and then almost looked like he was getting a fit of hysterical giggles which was just completely weird. "...aren't you meant to try and make me be real about this shit?" he asked. "No, it's, hey delusion is great let's go with that.”

Seb exhaled hard, and shook his head. "Given the last two years, nah, if delusion works for you, I'm all right with it. I'm pretty sure that it might be a delusion. After all, I should be in prison, so wandering around and gorging myself on coffee and cake, and seeing *John*... it all seems a little magical."

"You won't go to prison," Paul said. "Fuck no. They'll want to debrief you, interrogate you but there's no way you are going to prison. They need you."

Because he was still a useful tool, and not much else. "So do you often construct painfully logical delusions?"

"Yeah.” Paul wiped at his face. "Not like I had much else to do." He was calmer now, and getting warmer as he drank the coffee. 

"Where Mycroft's a workaholic arse?" He sat up a little straighter, leaned in, and just, fuck, took a liberty. Ran his thumb over Paul's cheek to catch a missed spot. "I'm dragging you out with me. Even if it's just to sit outside. Crowds are sort of..." Not awesome.

"I can't go out like this," Paul replied. "I can't...people are too much. I've been trying to deal with it but for most of that time I was alone and when I wasn't...nothing good happened."

And sometimes even alone wasn't enough. Seb pulled back a little, mostly to shuck off his jacket, drop it to the floor. He put his arm around Paul almost immediately. "Okay. But outside, back gardens, you know? Get some sun on you. I'm going to try some cooking experiments, you can certainly suffer through that with me." 

Paul smiled just a little. "Yeah, okay...” He seemed shaky but was trying to be good about it, make an effort. He was at least losing some of that stiffness. 

"Okay." He shifted his fingers a little, closed his eyes. He could keep it all together for a while, do what he could for Paul. It was something to focus on. "Do you want me to stay down here tonight?"

There was a hesitation and then a soft. "Yeah." Then he went silent for a bit and said. "..But Mycroft.”

"I'll stick my head up and see where I can get." But no promises, he couldn't probably really even just help one person and get it right, never mind two. "Cake first."

"You trying to fatten me up again?” Paul said reaching with partial successful for light and flippant.

"Habit," Seb shrugged, standing up and retrieving the foam box the cake sat in. It was easy to open it up, provide Paul with plastic silverware, and then duck off to see if there was any point in trying to rouse Mycroft.

There were hints in what Paul had said that Mycroft did this sort of over-rationalising thing where he thought he was doing the best thing for them by not telling them things, or hiding out in his study. Maybe he could get him out of that zone. He just had to turn up for a start.

Just fucking be there, and Seb wasn't above using guilt to his advantage if he had to. He headed in without knocking, quiet, but watched Mycroft tilt his head slightly, indicating that he heard him. "What're you doing up here?"

"Working," Mycroft replied simply. "Thank you for the coffee though. Much appreciated."

"You know, I went to see John, thinking this is the perfect opportunity for you and Paul to have some time alone. I just sort of imagined you doing it in the same fucking room." 

Mycroft looked at him. "Paul is not feeling sociable. He said he was going to his room...I took it that meant he was wanting to be alone."

Seb bit the tip of his tongue for a moment. "Okay. Fuck, okay. I know this wasn't easy on you, yes, I know you’ve always been a complete hot mess when it comes to social shit. But can you *help* for once? Neither of us are in a position to meet you more than halfway."

Mycroft put his pen down and looked at him. "What do you need me to do? I thought he wanted space so I have given it to you. I have observed that you do better when you see John, so I have enable you to see John. I am attempting to follow the cues that you give me, so what is it that I am doing wrong?"

"You're getting them *wrong*. Jesus, do you live in some out of synch spaghetti western where you're so fucking logical that..." He'd crossed the space to the table, and put a hand around his upon arm. "C'mon, up. Paul needs you. Paul misses you. I'm about two steps from defenestrating you, but fuck. Comfort your god damned lover."

"I do not wish to upset him further. After all, I am the one that put him in that situation. And you." And that was apparently the crux of Mycroft's isolation, a firm belief that they did not want to see him because they were blaming him.

"Hey, you want to feel guilty, fine -- but *help*. You put us there, okay, help fucking fix us. All right? This is *hard*. I nearly had a panic attack in a fucking coffee shop. I can't seem to ratchet it down and relax. And I'm doing *light-years* better than Paul right now!" He didn't let go, instead urging Mycroft to his feet.

Mycroft didn't fight him, seemingly bemused by this sudden turn of events. He allowed himself to be led. "If you believe helping will not hurt him further then I will."

"He fell in love with you for reasons neither of you have ever explained to me, so yeah, I figure it can't make shit worse at the point." He barely refrained from hauling Mycroft out into the hallway, and didn't make eye contact with Mark as they passed him on the stairs.

Mark probably knew what they were doing if he was worth his salt. Paul was a little more composed when they reached his room, although evidence of his distress was still evident. To someone like Mycroft it should work like neon signs.

"Paul?"

"Yeah?" Paul shifted uncomfortably and it was suddenly obvious why Mycroft had a problem reading him. He had shut down immediately.

Un-fucking believable. Seb shut the door behind himself. "Now I see it. You're partners in denial."

"What are you talking about?" Paul said evasively. "Not denying anything."

"I wasn't aware I was doing anything wrong," Mycroft did sit next to Paul. "But it is obvious that when you told me you wanted to be alone that was possibly not entirely true."

Seb took up post at the door, watching them as Mycroft settled in. "Not at all true."

"You told me you were dealing Paul," Mycroft said.

""Fuck it, I'm not okay. I'm not dealing," Paul said wearily. "I've tried but. I can't keep it up."

"It's been two years. Two years with Jim. It's not like just being *away*," Seb murmured. "Jim's favourite game was making someone kill *themselves* without laying a hand on them. Not a finger. I can't even guess what he did."

"And I don’t want you to guess," Paul said shaking his head. "I don't even know if I am even sane. Reality is weird."

"Do you wish to talk about it?" Mycroft said tentatively.

Probably not, not then. Seb wasn't sure -- maybe Paul did, but he didn't. They weren't facing the same things, after all. He watched Paul's expression, while he lingered by the door and took a sip of his own to go coffee. Maybe they all needed therapy. Going it alone wasn't working so well just then. People too drugs for a reason, and being so detached that real was hard to be sure of was definitely a reason.

"How can I talk about it?" Paul asked with a shrug. "Seriously why the hell would anyone even want to know? Moriarty took me apart physically and mentally for his own amusement for. Whatever reasons he had.... Does it help anyone knowing how he did it?"

"Apparently it is meant to clarify things," Mycroft said. "Paul, I was trying to respect your needs."

"It might help eventually. I don't want to accidentally set you off," Seb murmured. "Things that bother you, that you'd rather avoid. Or not do."

"I don't know," Paul said. "I don't know what I can or can't do. Everything makes me on edge." He exhaled.

"Then perhaps we should just try, and see what will happen?" Mycroft answered." All of us, rather than assuming what the others want."

"Finally." Things were in a shitty state when he was left feeling like the emotionally intelligent one.

"Okay," Paul murmured. "But if I lose it in the middle of that night..."

"That is fine," Mycroft said. "I don't think you should leave. And that applies to you too Seb."

"Rather see if we can help you through it, instead of letting you figure it out through trial and error." Seb gave another shrug, lingering nearer to them as they both sat on the edge of the bed.

"I don't want that little bastard to win," Paul mumbled under his breath.

"He will pay," Mycroft promised. "I promise you that."

"Won't fix anything." He loitered, set his coffee on the side table, looking down at Mycroft and Paul both. "But I'm scared as shit that he's coming back for us."

"He will come back and he will try to take us down," Mycroft acknowledge that. "But we will take him down. Sherlock.” He paused a moment. "Sherlock, though it pains me to admit it, is more similar to his way of thinking than I am. We will work to be ready for his ploy."

Ploy. Like it was going to be something simple, like they could easily take it apart. "Don't keep me in the dark on whatever you find," Seb murmured. He leaned in a little, and after a moment, sat on Paul's other side. "I'll be able to help."

"I am aware of that," Mycroft said. He sighed a little. "Perhaps I should inform you there are various agencies who wish to debrief you both. I have...been blocking them so far but will not be able to do so forever."

"I'll go first." Get it over with, get home, maybe have himself together enough to be useful when Paul went. One at a time, not both at a time.

"You are not going anywhere until you are legally back as my Companion," Mycroft said and patted him gently. "I can protect you in law then, Benefactor law. If they take you now, I will have difficulty getting them to adhere to human rights. Runaway Companions are considered little more than stray dogs in many areas."

"No, I hadn't noticed," Seb deadpanned, sliding an arm behind Paul's back. He could feel Paul slowly relaxing, and he was half suspecting it was sleep catching up. They needed to get him lying down. Almost absently, he rescued the mostly empty coffee cup. "Woof woof."

He felt rather than heard the little snort from Paul there.

"It should not be long now," Mycroft said. "But if you feel unable to be questioned, I will find a way to stall the process."

"I'd like to get it over with." He wanted to do it not at all, but he understood the necessity of it, really understood that the more information he shared the more useful it was.  
"I will make a note to that effect," Mycroft said. "Do you wish me to be present during the interviews? I can do so."

What did he say to that? I'm a big boy, fuck you very much, I'm fine? That was what Paul was doing, in essence, and it didn't really work. "I'd be fine with 'in the general vicinity; in case something goes sideways."

"Then I will arrange to be available," Mycroft said. There was a moment he looked between them and Paul had his eyes closed where he was between them, sliding down slowly as muscle tension faded.

Seb squirmed a little, set coffee cups on the floor, and nodded at Mycroft. "Let's just lean back and call it a night, then? I've been sleeping like shit."

"Agreed. If Paul can sleep with us here then, that has to be a positive," Mycroft replied.

It took some maneuvering. But Paul was already down to t-shirt and shorts, and Seb was more than happy to twist out of his clothes and drop them on the floor to the side of the bed, keeping close to Paul's side through it all, while Mycroft stripped down more slowly. Crawling under the sheets and blankets with him was a missed luxury. He'd had too much sugar, too much sweet stuff, too much milk, and it left him feeling sated and lulled and nervous because he was going to sleep too heavily. It was a long-missed mix of sensations, though -- Paul's warm skin and Mycroft's cologne, and the detergent in the sheets, and a hand loosely draped around his own shoulders as he kept close close close. 

He could feel the flutter of Mycroft's fingers against Paul's t-shirt, near enough to his own. Mycroft was saying something quiet in Paul's ear, and Seb couldn't hear, but it filtered through slowly fading senses. Whether he belonged there or not, right now, at this moment, it did feel good.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It took what seemed like forever for kisses to slide down his neck, for hands at his sides to ruck up the t-shirt to ghost over his nipples. "All of you, John, is very much *mine*. Every part of you. I want to reacquaint myself with that."
> 
> "I know," he murmured, using his good arm and hand to slide over Sherlock’s skin, his wild hair that he never did anything with but always looked fantastic.

It had been a nice evening out, with plans for more. That was the first thing left in John's mind as trudged slowly up the stairs to the flat. Faintly, he could hear Sherlock killing a violin concerto, which could mean that his attempt at a job interview had either gone very well, or very poorly.

Hopefully it was good news and at least he had food for Sherlock because it had been tiring in its own way. "Hey Sherlock," he called out as he let himself in. "I'm back."

Sherlock stopped, after a few more notes, and seemed to be sizing John up. Or cataloging him. It left John wondering what Sherlock was and wasn't seeing. "After solving a murder for the Detective Inspector, he's interested in bringing me on as a consultant through slightly more official channels."

"You solved a murder just like that?" John said smiling. "How?" Sherlock loved to tell him things like that.

"It was dully simple -- the boyfriend's use of past tense, a distinctive red fiber on the shoulder of his jumper, the marks on his hands from the rope he used on her neck, which also doubled as their bedroom play rope -- silk., bright green as well, very *fine*, very interesting lines. He was ever so eager to get on television and spin a story of her infidelities."

"You are amazing," John said smiling again. "I brought you some takeaway as I doubt you've eaten at all. So how's that going to work? He's going to call you up if he needs help?"

"Ideally. I'm sure there will be instances where he doesn't yet know he needs me. There's an annoying paperwork process, but my military service will cover those requirements." Whatever 'those' requirements were, which probably included not being some un-credentialed jerk off the street, though John was sure Sherlock could've made that work as well. "You look tired."

"Well, I've been out all day," he said. "My shoulder hurts some, I'm not used to it I guess. Seb was... I think Seb is in a worse state than I am which is completely understandable."

"He's in a different state. Worse or better are purely subjective." Sherlock stepped over the sofa by stepping on it, and leaned in to kiss John. "Did you enjoy yourself? I haven't heard from Mycroft, but I assume Sebastian is on his way home by now."

"Yeah, yeah we had a good time. I think it helped. We're going to try and do some normal stuff," John answered as he kissed back. "Mm."

"Normal stuff?" There was a pause, and Sherlock smirked slightly against John's mouth. "I suppose I'm no use for that. Waste of my time, I probably take the fun out of shopping." No, he definitely took the leisure out of it. The last time they'd gone to get uniforms, he'd insulted the seamstress, corrected their sub-par measuring techniques, and given them John's measurements rather than let them touch him. Buying clothing off a rack was miles and miles beneath Sherlock. "What's the takeaway?"

"Thai. Thought you might like it... very healthy," he said. "Let me heat it up for you. Thank you for allowing me to see Seb. "

He waved a hand dismissively as he took the bag from John to carry it into the kitchen. "I'm still bothered that you thank me for letting you see old friends. Clearly Sebastian is fond of you. I'm unsettled that when you eventually start sleeping together I'll be two bedpartners removed from my brother."

"Excuse me?" John looked at him. "What do you mean eventually start sleeping together?" He put the food in to heat up.

Sherlock squinted at him as if trying to gauge whether John was being sarcastic or not. "The body language between you indicates unresolved longing. I don't care. You're mine, my companion. I'm not always interested in sex. The whole rest of the world is sex sex sex sex, it's very distracting. I prefer you, but not to your expectations, I know. You have a 'normal' sex drive. And then there's Sebastian, I've always found it remarkable how many brain cells of my brother's he likely wasted. Really, what kind of competition can Moriarty be if he spends so much time obsessing over sex acts?"

"Seriously Sherlock," John just stared at him. "Seb is… he's more than a brother to me, but I wouldn't start sleeping with him. I wouldn't say that I wouldn't want more sex and that I would be averse but... why am I even talking about this?"

Sherlock started to take down plates. "Warm that up, will you? Just tell me if you do, so if anyone asks I can plausibly say I gave my permission."

"Yeah well, Seb would need permission too, okay, and that's not likely," John answered. "How did we get on to this?"

"Sebastian was given carte blanche in his personal affairs before he was even branded." Sherlock sniffed a teacup. "You also smell like him, overly manly soap, cigarettes and coffee. Ergo, cuddling or sitting close enough that you might as well have been, for long hours in the small coffee shop up the road."

"Sherlock, you make it seem sordid," John said in exasperation as the microwave pinged. "Seb needs touch. Always has, so yeah we were close."

"Sordid implies a judgment I'm not applying to it, John. I don't concern myself at that level." He let John get dinner out as well. "Keep it in mind."

"Eat your dinner Sherlock," John said pulling it out steaming hot. "Tell me about the Benefactor from the Met? You must have impressed him."

"DI Lestrade. Sometimes acquaintance of my brother, but I won't hold that against him. I met him first." And somehow that meant he had claim to him. He sat down, and let John slide food onto the center of the table. "He's not entirely stupid. One could call it street smarts, and he's certainly aware of when he's not up to snuff to solve a case."

"At least he doesn't let pride get in the way. So he's going to call you?" John asked as he sat down with a sigh of relief.

"Oh yes. As I said, there's paperwork, and I'll be added as a consultant role. Tomorrow morning." Sherlock started to eat, almost mechanically. "He arrested me for heroin, once."

He should be shocked but he wasn't really. "You don't do that... anymore?" It was half a request half a statement. He was going to need to take his pain killers shortly.

"No, of course not. How would I hide it from you?" Well, he'd been gone for four months so there was a huge chunk of time. The military did drug tests as well, but there was probably no such thing as truly random and Sherlock Holmes. "Never mind, don't answer that.”

"Mm." John looked at him. At least Sherlock was eating. "How about cold cases? I mean, if you are really bored."

"Only if they're interesting. Then it doesn't matter if it's cold." Then John had the perfect cold case in mind -- a missing or murdered benefactor, previous owner of one Jim Moriarty.

"Well, you know, there's always the perfect murder to solve isn't there?" he said casually glancing over at Sherlock.

"The perfect murder is one that the rest of the world never notices was committed," Sherlock countered. 

God, he left himself open sometimes. Mind, he was smiling, so maybe he knew it.

"Exactly." John raised his eyebrows at Sherlock just savoring the moment briefly. "And until recently, no one did know about the possibility of this murder..."

"John, are you trying to give me a case?" He had maybe half, less than half a second to answer, and Sherlock charged over it, eyes half closed for a moment. "Not his real name, art of death, perhaps?"

"Jim Moriarty is an ex-Companion. Now he could be a runaway but... he despises Benefactors and he doesn't seem the type to leave someone he hates behind him." John said.

Sherlock was rolling it over in his head for a moment. "I'll consider it. He would have done it shortly after going home. I can't imagine him pretending to play along and like it unless it suited him somehow. Can you?" That felt spot on, that Jim would only have lasted until... well, until what? Was he a sociopath all along, or did he have a pile of Companion hopes at some point and they all shattered? Or was he past sociopathy?

"There is the impression he is broken. I threw that at him a few times," he said. "But no, he expected something and didn't get it."

Sherlock's mouth tilted a little, thoughtful. "Then he's far from in control of his emotions. That could be used against him..." Sure, if a fellow wanted to piss him off.

"That's true but...” John found himself gesturing randomly. "He's in control of being out of control, does that make sense?"

Sherlock's eyebrows came together briefly, mouth partially opened. "Yes," he offered, oddly quiet. "Yes it does. Mmm. Being perfectly aware of what you're doing and able to stop it at any moment."

"There are some times when he wasn't. He ... it's a fine edge," he said. "A very fine edge. Seb thinks he made things worse but he didn't. He reined him in some. If Jim had planned that ship bombing, things would have been much worse."

"Or it might not have executed at all." Sherlock's mouth twisted a little. "But we wouldn't have been forewarned. He was enjoying how far he could push Seb before he turned and bit him." Sherlock shoveled another bite of food into his mouth. "I know you're not doing as well as you're pretending."

"I'm not pretending," John said. "I had this discussion with Seb, I...I'm not hiding anything. I am behaving how I feel."

"Are you? The limp...?" He let that linger out there, but John knew Sherlock wouldn't press.

"If I'm doing it, I'm not repressing consciously okay?" John said aware of the irony.

Sherlock's mouth twitched. "I'm still not going to try anything physical with you until your arm's better. I don't want it to become permanent damage."

"Spoilsport," John commented. He sighed a little. "Moriarty is going to come for us, Sherlock. And he finds you very interesting."

"I know. He's come more and more to my attention, because he wants to." Sherlock leaned back in his chair, fingers tenting thoughtfully in front of him. Sometimes Sherlock's hands reminded him of birds with minds of their own. And sometimes they roosted. "Nothing will happen to you. I won't let it."

"And Seb. He'll want Seb back... but I could see him sitting there intrigued. I deliberately intrigued him to stay alive. He said it was my fault he decided to take on Seb." John explained.

Sherlock snorted. "Yes, of course. Of course. You presented a Companion who appealed to him on a personal level -- by being you. It made him wonder what he was missing in terms of companionship, I'm sure. And he found... perhaps what he'd always wanted. A compliment to who he was, in a way his benefactor failed to provide. And *you* dangled the prospect of *two* at him. The both of you, that's... that is a compelling picture," Sherlock murmured.

"Why Sherlock, are you having possible sexual thoughts?" John asked with a little quirk of a smile.

The edge of his mouth pulled up a little behind the steady peak of his fingers. "Yes, quite possibly. Still, I have excellent control, and we won't be jeopardizing your shoulder."

"I'm going to keep trying," John said. "Eat. Did you not eat anything when I was missing?"

"I get distracted," Sherlock murmured, glancing down at his empty plate. "I... you're my companion, and you were missing." Possibly that was as close as Sherlock was ever going to get to saying that John was a part of him.

It was enough to make him beam with pleasure though. "Well it's nice to be missed, even if it was mainly due to you not getting regular meals on time."

Sherlock almost looked sheepish. "I also missed waking up with your cold feet shoved against my legs." And sleeping wrapped around John like a burrito, if how things had been lately was any indication. 

John knew he was grinning like an idiot but he couldn't help it. "Elevated to hot water bottle status. I'm honoured."

"Reverse hot water bottle." He lifted his eyebrows at John, and stood up smoothly. Sherlock spent so much time being perfectly still, that he forgot how graceful the man was. He gathered up the plates, and leaned over to press a kiss against John's mouth.

That was something that made him want to put his arms around Sherlock, but he was thwarted by the sling. "Mm. Reconsidering your resolve?"

He got one arm around Sherlock, and Sherlock sighed, not pulling away just yet. "Perhaps. A little. Carefully. Meet me there and I'll tidy up."

"Okay, it takes me a while to get undressed right now," he said getting up. He could take his painkillers and make the most of it.

"I'll help you," Sherlock offered, perhaps quite seriously. He didn't really have to worry about not being active enough to satisfy Sherlock. Sherlock had occasionally stopped mid *anything* to look something up when eureka struck. If he fell asleep... it would be all right. Sherlock would tuck him into bed and go to sleep and that was incredibly reassuring, even if it was a thought he couldn't have imagined having when he'd been back at the center.

"I'll meet you in there," he said seriously enough. He was looking forward to some intimate contact.

He managed to get off his trousers and unbutton his shirt before Sherlock returned but wrangling it off his arm was definitely defeating him. He was going to have to stick to loose jumpers or something at this rate. He popped the pills, swallowed them dry and waited for Sherlock.

It wasn't a long wait, which was almost surprising for John. Sherlock could get completely lost in his head, or distracted, but he heard him coming up the stairs, an oddly desiring look in his eyes. "I see your shirt defeated you."

"Completely, yeah,” John grinned. "I'm going to have to wear jumpers or something." Sherlock was gorgeous sometimes, with his eyes bright and interested in him.

"You'd be lifting your arm up more if you wore jumpers," Sherlock pointed out, sliding his hand carefully to unhook the immobilizer. "Don't move."

"Not moving… ow." He grimaced as his shoulder took the weight of his arm properly. Sherlock’s fingers were just so expressive.

Long, and always moving, artful. He carefully eased the shirt off of John, and leaned back for a moment to grab another t-shirt that was going to get all stretched out of shape. He didn't want the brace abrading John's skin, or setting up friction. 

He managed it with only a grunt of discomfort and he shuddered. Then he was pretty much naked aside from his socks. Well and the stupid t-shirt once Sherlock re-secured his shoulder immobilizer, but the fabric was soft and Sherlock almost immediately slid a hand up under it, against his skin. "On the bed."

"Okay," John sat carefully, and leaned back. "So what do I get because it's been a while?" Really, he should be offering to Sherlock, but he wasn't going to complain when Sherlock seemed to know what to do.

Or had a checklist of things he wanted to do. The edges of Sherlock's mouth twitched a little as he moved with John, leaning down to kiss him. Apparently he wasn't going to get any hints, just contact, while Sherlock's hands lingered slowly against his sides. It felt good to kiss Sherlock again, to feel a faint undercurrent of want.

It was strange. Jim had threatened a lot but never quite gotten around to raping him. He had played the mind games and… Well, there just hadn't been anything. It was good to relax and just feel.

Sex with Sherlock was always a long, luxurious affair, dragged out and timely. It took what seemed like forever for kisses to slide down his neck, for hands at his sides to ruck up the t-shirt to ghost over his nipples. "All of you, John, is very much *mine*. Every part of you. I want to reacquaint myself with that."

"I know," he murmured, using his good arm and hand to slide over Sherlock’s skin, his wild hair that he never did anything with but always looked fantastic. His Benefactor and annoying but compelling to him. He never wanted to lose him. John sometimes wondered if he never wanted to let people go. Not Seb, not Sherlock and now... not Paul as well.

He hadn't expected that, and there was nothing to do but ask after him through Seb, who'd been trying and failing to explain where Paul fit in all night. Sherlock hummed in the back of his throat, and bit faintly at John's left clavicle, more of a hard suck than anything.

"Didn't I get you enough meat to eat?" John joked lightly even as he felt himself respond. God this was what they all dreamed of.

"No," was the deadpan answer while he nudged John to sit back, propped up against pillows. It was almost comfortable like that, while Sherlock finally got his own shirt off, leaning down to kiss John's stomach.

He relaxed although the anticipation was there quivering in his gut. "I'll remember that next time...” He could do this with his hair forever, just thinking how lucky he was to feel things like this. He felt fine, he didn't feel anything except discomfort from his shoulder and that was fast fading under drugs.

"Broccoli as well," Sherlock murmured against his skin before sighing and sliding a hand down to cup John's half hard cock. His fingers were warm, and quick to grasp.

"Oh god...Sherlock. How can you possibly be talking about broccoli and gripping my cock," he said gasping.

"Rather simply," he murmured, giving John a slow pump as he kissed his chest again.

"Tease," he murmured. His shoulder twinged when he inhaled sharply so he deliberately slowed his breathing down. "Now this I've daydreamed about."

"About a hand job from your benefactor, or me discussing broccoli. Because if it's the latter, John, I do have to inquire as to the quality of your sexually oriented daydreams. I never thought you were a vegisexual." He tilted his head up, back bowed in a way that looked almost pretty to John, smirking.

He laughed, drinking in the sight of him, the cheekbones catching the light. "Well you know, there were very few green vegetables out there."

Sherlock's eyes lit up when he grinned. "Mrs. Hudson surely has some lovely cucumbers from her allotment..." And then he tilted his head back down, licking a slow line down to John's belly button. It made his hand twitch in Sherlock's hair.

John spluttered another laugh. "Not what I was thinking when I said I wanted more greens in me," he replied. Sherlock would probably try it sometime - it would remind him of Practicum, although their practicum had allowed actual bodily contact - not all training centers had a license to do that.

"Certainly one way to achieve it." He kissed John's thigh, and slid his own leg a little, knee sliding under John’s calf as he got comfortable, giving John's cock another stroke before he kissed the tip.

It was like a jolt of electricity just there and he felt himself twitch. "I worry when you talk like that. Before I know it there will be a whole fruit bowl and salad cart in the bedroom for experimentation."

"New use for bananas as well. Green plantains." Sherlock's voice was still deadpan as he leaned on an elbow and finally closed his mouth around John's cock to suck in earnest.

"Oh god...suggestive vegetables can't do that...” John gasped and his head dropped back against the pillow.

Sherlock hummed against his cock, tongue pressing him against the roof of Sherlock's mouth. He could close his eyes, and just focus on the feeling, heat and suction, his fingers idly massaging John's balls.

His breathing increased but all he could concentrate on was that feeling, all those feelings. Fuck, he was unable to think. It was glorious, and all feeling. He didn't need to keep a thought in his head, all he had to do was feel, and breath and let Sherlock do whatever he liked, which was quite nicely exactly what John wanted. He took a staggered breath, and heard, felt, Sherlock pull back, slurping noisily in a way that made John's balls ache. 

"I'm not going to last long," he warned a bit weakly. The endorphins were sloshing around now, dulling everything.

"Good," Sherlock murmured, lowering his head again to suck hard enough to make his bad leg shake. Fuck, fuck, that felt good, that felt so good, Sherlock just going to town on him.

He wanted to wriggle and writhe, but his shoulder wouldn't let him and oh fuck, what was Sherlock doing, he needed to have more than this but it was almost too much

He didn't have the strength to hold back, although the sensations made time stretch and warp. When he eventually came, it was with a delighted noise he couldn't contain and felt fantastic enough to drown out anything from his shoulder.

Sherlock shifted back up, mouth lingering against John's other shoulder as he settled in partially atop him. "Oh, I. I need to see the companion records from Mycroft's first year."

John was busy trying to remember how to think and breathe and managed. “Wait what?" as he lay there, blinking.

"Companions, John! Creative individuals with rich inner lives is a hallmark of companions. Conversely, there's a tendency to hold onto perceived slights and grudges, and this one is after *my* brother, his activities were faintly noticeable to my *brother* -- what if he was up for choosing and my *brother* didn't choose him?" How. How did he even get there?

"So he sets out to destroy the world because Mycroft didn't pick him?" John asked incredulously. "This is all some… sulky revenge?"

"Well, yes, when you say it that way, it sounds horrible, doesn't it?" Sherlock shifted to curl an arm around John's waist, still careful. He was warm, and his skin was comfortable against John's, even if John felt ridiculous in a t-shirt and socks and nothing else. "Still, if one goes home to... say, standard underequipped Benefactor, and one *knew* that someone with much broader resources *could* have chosen you and *didn't*..."

"He must have been quite old, most of us are just grateful to be chosen by anyone," John replied. "Why did you choose me then?" He was faintly curious, always had been about how the teenage Benefactors ever chose their Companions.

"You seemed suitably curious, naturally active, and imbued with a sense of your individual agency." Sherlock looked sideways at him, and added, "Also, you were impressed by my intellect."

"A slight let down," John said with a faint smile. "We're taught about being chosen as if it is some sacred thing like falling in love at first sight."

"Preposterous. What most people mistake for love is a series of shared experiences, and a release of hormones," he murmured against John's neck. "Also, you were rather visually unappealing as a small child, and any benefactors who actually believe they're falling in love with a pre-chosen companion should be reported to the authorities as a budding predator."

"Wow, all those myths shot down," he said relaxing. "Did you just say I was an ugly child? I bet Seb wasn't. I always remember the teachers being pleased with him for the way he looked, except he kept throwing himself into mud and falling out of trees."

Sherlock snorted inelegantly against John's skin, and shifted to stretch out beside him on his good side. "You looked very much like you do now. Big dark eyebrows, blonde hair, very expressive face." Sherlock's hand lifted, his thumb brushing over John's nose. "Your face grew into this. You had an 80% chance of being a very attractive adult, and here you are. Now, there's a higher chance of traditionally pretty children turning into strange, blank looking adults. Sebastian looks his most flattering when he's smiling, or wearing a goofy expression. The rest of the time, he looks like he should be running an illegal card game somewhere."

"That's because he probably would be half the time," John replied with a smile. Sherlock had complemented him and he was going to memorize that. "So Moriarty might have been rejected by Mycroft."

"High likelihood. I'll have to correlate with my brother and the records, but really, mostly the records first, they're much more reliable." He leaned down a little, and snagged the bedding to pull it up. "Given that the council house is closed until -- damn, no, we do have time for it, it's a Friday, how do you feel about putting pants back on?"

"You may have to help me a little," he said moving stiffly. "Okay, let me get up. I'll get dressed."

"Excellent." Sherlock went from warm and comfortable and lazy in bed with John to up to his feet in seconds, skimming his own clothes back on. Oh, just coming up on past ten, the council house'd be open for hours more. 

John moved a lot slower but he didn't mind. Sherlock loved to chase down leads, and his eyes were bright. He could do it, and stay with him... as long as his painkillers stayed effective.

* * *

Everything was held up by paperwork.

Everything. He couldn't be declared a companion again *yet* because Augustus Moran had decided that, once he got wind of the paperwork winding its way through the system that he could have a real boy heir again if he managed to reclaim Seb. It was an infuriating level of bullshit, and he'd been made by Paul to promise that he wouldn't go to the man's house and threaten him with a gun.

Mycroft had offered it to him as an option, but it wasn't at all what he wanted. Freedom by another name was still losing everything he had and trading it for a pile of someone else's shit and baggage that he didn't want. He had enough all on his own that he didn't need to go shopping for someone else's problems.

Which was how he'd started to stalk down the man's limited remaining family instead. In and around meetings with John and watching Sherlock try to pick pick pick at an old dead case that wasn't half as simple as any of them had hoped, because all records of the non-chosen boys from Mycroft's first choosing had mysteriously disappeared. And the year before that for good measure.

'Rebecca' Moran liked to drink coffee, and was a normal seeming woman, few years older than Seb but not many, with a new marriage under her belt but all the signs of someone who was very comfortable living alone as well. She took her coffee by herself, with a book in a corner, unselfconscious.  
It was strange to think that she was almost certainly his sister or half-sister. From what his research showed him she was successful and intelligent and he wondered what it would have been like to have a sister and grow up not as a Companion.

Still, the what-if game didn't change anything. He was a Companion, and he wasn't going to turn his back on the kind of life he'd lived. He was still going to go over and see if she could talk some sense into her father. He got a cup of coffee, small, enough to have something in hand, and headed for her solitude.

She was aware enough to look up when he got close. "Hello? Can I help you?" she said with just a hint of suspicion.

"Maybe. I think we might be able to help each other. I'm Sebastian Holmes." He didn't pull a chair out to seat himself, not yet, but he did hold his hand out to her in greeting.

She looked at him. "Oh. Oh Sebastian *Holmes*. Nice to finally meet you." She looked a bit awkward. "For a moment I had the unlikely thought that you were going to try and chat me up or something."

He squinted at her a little, and then looked at the chair with half a questioning gesture, and watched her nod faintly before he let himself sit down. "I wouldn't really worry about that, I'm sort of gay."

"Well obviously now I look at you, I've figured that out." Rebecca looked at him and reached out to shake hands. "Nice to meet you, I'm Rebecca your possibly sister. I prefer Becca or Becks if only because it pisses dear old dad off."

He shook her hand, smirking a little as he slouched into the chair. "And that's why I'm here. I'd like to get back to living my life, but he's gotten involved in the paperwork and it's made things a bit of a mess. I was hoping you might have suggestions."

"Mmm. Unfortunately, Dad is…" Rebecca seem to be grasping for words. "Well, frankly he's a bastard. Since Richard committed suicide..." She wavered a bit there. "Well, he's become a little bit irrational about things."

"Oh, I suspect that started before then, given how he's handled this. When, uh, did Richard suicide?" It was normal to ask questions like that, to inquire after people. He just wasn't really up to his performing best just then. He was usually better, smoother than that.

"Several years ago," Becca said. "And you know, girls are not appropriate heirs to the line. The Family needs a male Benefactor Patriarch apparently. I'm not sure why, as far as I'm concerned we've functioned without one for a couple of decades."

He caught himself smiling a little as he took a sip of his coffee. "I'm not an appropriate Benefactor Patriarch. At all. I'm pretty happy where I am, so..." He spread his hands in half a gesture of surrender. "There's no fucking way I want to do that to myself."

"Unfortunately my father is of the general opinion that if he just keeps repeating himself louder, then he will get what he wants," Becca replied. "Benefactor Holmes tied him up in knots and he was lodging formal proceedings against him after you were declared dead. I see you got better by the way."

"Thanks." Formal proceedings while he'd been gone? Fuck, like Mycroft had needed anything else to handle. He lifted his eyebrows, still smiling a little. "I have a bit of a weird job. I'm mostly glad to just be home again, settling in. But your father's got me stuck in this limbo state, and I'm not going to *be* a benefactor, if I have to cut the brakes on his car."

"Need someone to hold the wire cutters?" Becca said. "Look, Richard... It's complicated. Richard had a Companion called Katherine and they were so... so in love. It was one of those things that make you believe all the Benefactor Companion hype. Only Dad pressured them constantly for an heir. Literally every other word out of his mouth and Katherine- well she was pregnant, something went badly wrong and she died. And my ever loving father said to my brother at her funeral that at least it cleared the way for a society wedding as if she was a bit of furniture to be replaced."

Ah. He could imagine the pain that followed, the loss, because everything had been a wreck and people *did* stupid shit for love. Seb blinked, holding onto his cup with both hands, more for the heat than because he needed to. "He's a piece of work. I'd... I can't imagine." Except he could. Losing Paul had been wrenching.

"Richard never recovered. I sometimes think, I sometimes think him committing suicide was at least in part revenge upon our father," she said with a brittle sort of shrug. "And it's like water off a ducks back. What I'm saying is Augustus Moran is about as reasonable as a religious fanatic."

Dear Jim, can you fix it for me? Seb bit the inside of his mouth, and took a short swig of coffee. "I'd rather reason with him than kneecap him, but I'll do that if I have to. I need information on him first, though. Blackmail's easier for people like that."

"Right now, I'm not sure what you could do, to do that," Becca replied. She smiled a little. "I've heard of Mycroft Homes. I work in the Civil service myself, and he has a reputation. But my father...our father will persist beyond the realms of common sense. He will need to be squashed or… shown he can be squashed to stop him, otherwise he just won't believe it."

"Yeah, well, he's going to get that." Seb gave a shaky laugh. "Shit, two years, and my life gets held up by a fucking world owes him everything benefactor."

"Sorry," she said. "He listens to me just as much as he listens to a brick wall. I've adopted the same strategy in return. Apparently we have fantastic conversations to ourselves."

"Right." He rubbed a hand over his face for a moment. "Okay. So, uh. What was our mother like?"

"Beautiful, and intelligent. More than likely father chose her based on looks but he got a lot more," she said. "She wasn’t allowed to work, but she wrote. She was brilliant at that, but he wouldn't allow her to get published."

"Do you have her papers, her writing?" Because he was a control freak, of course, and what could a companion contribute to the world? It made his head hurt. "Or did he keep them?"

"I got them," she said. "I made sure of that. I can make copies of them for you if you want. He treated mother like an ornament."

"I'd like that, a copy. You should publish them, after the old bastard finally dies." It was random, and he wasn't sure what to ask or say next. "What part of the civil service are you in?"

"Migrating my way around departments as I work up the ranks. I'm a shit hot analyst and aide," she said and grinned in a way that looked familiar.

He caught himself giving an echoing grin. "Cool. Good. Good. I'm glad you're doing all right. Your husband, too." Sergeant on the force, both of them on track to drag themselves up the ladder.

"Look, Seb..." She said looking up at him. "I know we've only just met, but whatever happens, can we stay in touch? I mean...legally to contact you before I would have had to make a formal request through your Benefactor but now. Maybe....I'd like a younger brother you know?"

The edges of his mouth quirked a little, and he caught himself nodding. "Mycroft doesn't really stand on ceremony. He's annoyingly posh and reserved, but rules like that, I never have to check on. Let me just..." He leaned a little, fishing his phone out of his pocket. "Exchange of contact info?"

"Yeah," she pulled out her own phone, preparing to input his details. "So what are you thinking about doing about the legal wrangling?"

He brought his phone info up and turned it around for her. "Fighting it tooth and nail. I haven't really had the headspace to deal with it, except to be pissed off. I've got a lot going on."

She keyed it in and looked at him. "Show of...political strength would be good. He respects power and little else to be honest."

The most he could really do was mention it to Mycroft. Seb closed his eyes, and shrugged for a moment. Power, power, he could personally turn the guy's life upside down, but that sort of Shit was generally against the law and he didn't want to reach out and touch any of those many many contacts. "He'll regret it. Soon enough."

"So you able to talk about the declaring dead thing or is that classified beyond my clearance level?" she asked, accepting his word on that.

"Really hideously classified, yeah. I was downrange, is about all I can say. I missed the godforsaken amounts of rain and murk London gets." He took a sip of his coffee. "I got-- my benefactor's partner was missing in action. He's back now, but it wasn't a... Good situation. He lost a leg." Which went back to the completely preoccupied bit.

"That's rough," she said and it was sympathetic but not cloying. "Damn, and the last thing you need is all this crap right?"

"It's not really a good time to try to deal with it," Seb murmured in agreement. "I mean, I'm glad to finally meet you, but. Circumstances suck."

He saw Becca start to reply and then look up puzzled behind him.

"Sebastian, runaway Companion?" the man said. "We need you to come with us."

Ah. "Runaway is really the wrong word. Pending paperwork problem," Seb drawled turning in the chair and shifting a little. There were two of them and one of them was well and obviously armed. "And you are?"

"Home Office," the man flashed his ID and the other two next to him. "We have some questions we need to ask you."

"You can't approach him off the street like this," Becca put in. "He's a Companion."

"Strictly, he is legally a runaway at this juncture and we are required by law to sequester him pending a Benefactor judge’s decision," the man said a little smugly. "Are you going to come quietly?"

There was no sense in making threats. What Seb knew was that he'd never gone quietly in his life. "Nah." He was out of the chair in seconds, throwing his coffee at the armed one before bolting to the door.

He heard a spluttering "get the bastard!" as he hit the door. Unfortunately outside the door were more agents and tazers. 

"Hands up or we will fire!" he heard the bellow.

Which did stop him, because there was hopeful and then there was crazy. "All right, all right. Let's pretend we're reasonable men..."

Behind him, the original agent came out still cussing and he could hear Becca haranguing him. "Let's get the hell out of here. Get cuffs on him."

He kept his hands up. "You're going to regret this, mate. You might pull this shit on some companions, but I will make you regret being born."

"Funny, I thought that was my line," he said as one of his flunkies put cuffs on him. "Damn it, let's get the hell out of here." Oh and a government car. Mycroft was going to go ballistic.

"This is an illegal arrest!" Becca shouted from behind him. "You have no right."

"He is a runaway Companion. That makes it legal," the man said again.

"Bullshit, he was declared dead and now he isn't. That's different. He did not declare himself dead and Companions do not cease to be Companions after death. They are still owned by the family line... you are on crappy legal ground, and you know it otherwise you wouldn't be snatching him."

God bless high flying government civs. Seb pulled at the cuffs while they frog marched him into the black car, someone pushing his head down before he was secured in the back behind two bruisers. Fucking fantastic. "Seriously, what're you hoping to accomplish?" He was going to mouth off the whole damn time. Fuck compliance.

"Justice," the man replied. "Or have you forgotten your terrorist activities?"

He grimaced, but still managed to roll his eyes at the man. "I was undercover. It was documented. Don't tell me, wait, I know the next words are going to be 'not with us'."

"Oh a mind reader too," the man snarked at him. "Undercover, how very convenient. Let's go driver."  
He could be anywhere by the time word got out.

Fuck. 

It was a long drive, which told him it was out to the country. They hadn't started anything yet, but that was neither good nor bad -- just something to note. He stopped trying to get information out of them -- after all, he wasn't going to the council house, they weren't playing by their own supposed rules.

This was a stitch up, and he knew it. He was dragged out of the car and into the building which looked suitably non-descript. He was shoved into a holding room and for good measure one hand cuffed to the chair.

"I can still beat you to death with a chair," he finally howled, scanning the room for cameras. "Just because it's stuck to my wrist doesn't mean I won't try!"

He was left to stew for a while before the first Suit came in again. In a different suit which gave him some satisfaction. Once again tazers were in evidence, which was heartening they didn't want to kill him but they seemed very ready to use it. "Now then Sebastian, let’s see if you are ready to discuss things rationally."

"I was ready to discuss things rationally *after* my status dispute was settled," Seb muttered, pulling at his wrist a little. It was always his left fucking wrist, like the massive scarring there wasn't enough.

"And we all know your benefactor was using that to keep you away from questioning," he said. Jacobs from the glimpse of ID he saw sloppily tucked in a shirt pocket. "But now, he'll give you to us to save the embarrassment won't he? Of course he will. So now we have you, we get to keep you."

"Ah, no. No, I don't really think he's too concerned about embarrassment at this point." Seb cocked an eyebrow at Jacobs. "So, Mr. Jacobs. Let's just play with this concept. Either I'm someone's companion, or I'm about to be declared a benefactor. A very angry benefactor. How do you want to proceed with this line of questioning?"

"Frankly I don't give a shit about your status as opposed to anything aside from the fact you are a terrorist," he said. "So let’s get to that shall we?"

"Not a terrorist. I was under cover," he reiterated. It was true, it was what he'd *done*, and he'd fed plenty of information back.

"And organised the biggest mass killing of recent times. How many was the final death toll from the sinking of the Pacific Star?" Jacobs leaned forward. "Does that sound like an undercover agent or a disaffected terrorist thinking, hey, I think I'll be a double agent?"

"I passed information on about that, that you were able to use. I wasn't in a situation to burn myself just then. It was better that I stay with the situation and mitigate it as best as I could." He offered the responses easily, and it startled him a little how easy it was to pull them up.

Maybe some of what John, Mycroft and Paul had said had actually sunk in. He wasn't sure if he believed what he was saying though. 

"It would have been better if you burned your cover before the strike and saved all those innocent lives!" Jacobs looked at him with barely disguised hatred. "I have a room...a fucking room full of files of people killed in that explosion. Of the team who went in and were caught in the second trap. Husbands, wives, mothers, fathers... just you didn't give a shit about that did you?"

"Can't. I did the very best I could. It was supposed to be an *entire* strike group. Thousands more at a minimum." He swallowed, blinked, and caught the man's eyes. "I did. What I could."

"Really, nothing to lose then. How sad..." Jacobs stood and paced around. "Because then who is our next obvious targets to bring in to custody? Hmm?"

"You've already overstepped," Seb murmured. "And you only did it because my legal state's a mess. Seriously, you're a fucking fuck up, do you realize that? I'm cooperating with you, and you're threatening me at the same time. Do you have any brains between your ears?"

"Oh I'm sure you are not giving me everything," he said. "Because you like to hold back." Jacobs was walking around him. "How do I know you are telling me everything?"

He turned his head, watching the man as he walked. "You don't. You just have to accept what I tell you."

"I get to check it, and then add it to your rapidly growing pile of files.” He smiled a little. "Now let's go over each incident and make notes."

"Yeah, if you know so much, you tell me where to start." Seb felt his jaw clench. There was nothing to do but keep the guy on this toes for as long as he could.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

John yawned as he puttered around. Sherlock had let him doze on the couch while he remained oblivious in research and he was grateful for it, but cussing because half the day was gone and he hadn't done anything. Ridiculous.

The sofa was comfortable as well, too comfortable. He'd gotten slouchy on it, and Sherlock had drank his tea that had gone cold, when he hadn't meant to nap off in the first place. So that was a place to start, make a new pot. A pot that was actually warm, and find out how far Sherlock had gotten. Probably not too far, given that he was still in the flat.

Kettle boiling, and he made some toast, noting that Sherlock had failed to eat anything at all so he shoved a couple slices on a plate under his nose. "Tea, toast. Where have you got to?"

"Record contamination." he murmured it, looking up from his box of papers with mild disinterest at the toast. "A lack of papers is obvious -- but seemingly appropriate papers shuffled into the stacks? Five, six years older than the other documents. Now we have a timeline."

"Interesting," John said yawning. "Eat the toast. You get bitchy with low blood sugar." He ate his toast and slurped his tea. And looked for his phone. "Sherlock, have you nicked my phone?"

"Yes. Mine was ringing." He wasn't offering it back to John either, which... was normal, John supposed. Sherlock picked up a piece of the toast, leaning back from the paper and shuffling the lid back onto the box. "Moriarty. Hmn."

"And what have you done with your phone then?" John asked. If he was lucky it hadn't been tossed out the window.

"Fridge." Oh, well, it should've been all right with that, but it did propel John to open the door to pull Sherlock's phone out. Why he didn't just turn it off was beyond John.

"Sherlock you've got...22 missed calls," John said frowning. "From Mycroft, by the looks of it. Seriously, it could be important."

"My brother is having an emotional meltdown," Sherlock murmured, finishing off his toast and licking his fingers. "And I am unable to provide him support. Staying on the phone with him would be a waste of time."

"It might not be an emotional breakdown. It could be serious," John was flicking his way into the phone when he heard swearing outside in the stairwell. He frowned. It sounded like Paul, but Paul hadn't really been out of the house. Seb had mentioned that as one of his goals.

The big deal, getting Paul out of the house. Because he was stressing and anxious about it and that made sense to John. After so long of seeing so very few people... John felt that a little himself, the stress of crowds. Seb and Sherlock had a way of making the rest of the world fade away, seem unreal, which made it easier to deal with. Everything narrowed in to one person.

"It is serious," Sherlock agreed, not standing up. "Hence the emotional breakdown. Let them in, will you? Some agency's likely done away with Sebastian."

"What?" John startled and moved to the door, opening just in time to see Paul try the last few stairs. "Paul?"

"Seb was taken by someone claiming to be from the Home office," Paul declared, leaning into his crutches with an angry expression as he mostly got through the door on momentum. And Mycroft was hovering behind him -- impeccable, but strained around the eyes.

"He what?" John beckoned them both in. "Sorry, uh Sherlock's phone was in the fridge," he apologized. "I was asleep. Sherlock, we've got a problem."

"Yes, I know. Mycroft, can't you pull a few strings and make this go away like you do everything else? Oh yes, it's been complicated by that long game you were playing with Augustus Moran, I knew that would come back and bite you some day," Sherlock murmured from his perch in the kitchen. 

" 'I told you so' is not appropriate at this point," Mycroft said. "Someone is stepping out of line, but no one is admitting it. I need you to determine who it is."

"And then Mycroft is going to get biblical on their collective asses," Paul said lowering himself down to the sofa to rest. Probably briefly. "And if he doesn't, I will."

"Do you have any idea who it could be?" John asked. "And how do you know it was someone claiming to be the Home Office?"

"There's a witness," Sherlock declared, "as my brother doesn't work on hunches. Ah, but can this witness be trusted?" It sounded like he was standing up, coming into the living room, and John looked over his shoulder to see Sherlock sweeping in, hands tucked behind his back. 

"Rebecca Moran," Paul offered. "Estranged from her father. I suppose Seb was looking her up to see if she might be of use as an ally given the... hold-up."

"Are you *sure* I told you so isn't appropriate?" Sherlock stopped short of his brother, looking at all of them. "I don't think there's a lot of determining to be done. You want me to provide you with an answer that isn't the one you want to hear."

"Sherlock." Mycroft's tone had harmonics that John had never heard from Sherlock. It set all his instincts on high alert, because it sounded like power. Sherlock didn't respond, but John sure as hell wanted to, and maybe it was time to get that tea, settle everyone down. Everyone else in the room at least. 

"No, I won't fold for you, brother dear. You know it's the *actual* home office. Now what you want to do about it is a question I can help you with -- where they are now, yes, we can find that out. How to legally get your companion back, well..." He slid his eyes over to Paul.

"Rebecca Moran raised a good point. A Companion still belongs to the family after death," Paul said. "Legally speaking, it is their duty to dispose of remains. Mycroft didn't disown him, he merely declared him dead. "

"Which means on not being dead, he should revert immediately to legal companion status," Mycroft said. "The rest is just paperwork."

But paperwork was a big deal to a Companion, John knew that. His functioning status in society was entirely focused on the paperwork he got at his presentation. He served the tea, a little awkwardly with his arm still unable to bear much weight. "So why the Home Office? Rather than one of the other agencies?"

"Augustus Moran," Sherlock pitched in. "Do keep up, John. Did I-- no, actually, you've never met him, never mind. Sebastian's father. Sebastian should have been a benefactor, you see. Except this was before DNA got quite as exciting as it is now, and he has his mother's blood type which is rather inconclusive when one is psychotic and *sure* that one's companion was sleeping around on you, except that he's the spitting image of his father, same height, same blue eyes, same nose. It was rather stunning to see them in the same room together. That's what makes the situation so very... paperworky."

"Yeah, but I get that connection but Augustus Moran probably has enough sway to point them in the right direction," John said. "I mean, seriously, someone in there is thinking they are going to come out of the situation with immense personal gain. That's how it works. That's what we are taught... Risk taking is in direct proportion to personal gratification and motivation."

"And someone from the home office is going to get a lovely Christmas bonus if they manage to get Sebastian away from home and under the control of the council long enough to win his challenge," Sherlock agreed. "Surely you know who's been compromised in the home office, Mycroft. You have complicated charts in your head of whom looks at whom too long in meetings."

"The question becomes, are they after Sebastian, or are they after me?" Mycroft said. "That splits the herd of would be enemies."

"We're wasting time," Paul growled. "You think they are going to go easy on him or something?"

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Moran wants Sebastian -- and half the home office wants your head on a platter. The other half of the home office wants to see a terrorist hung high and soon, because there aren't enough people in the world to take the blame. Sebastian is a grown man, and they're not exactly going to peel his skin off, so let's approach this in a reasoned manner. We need to get him *out* of custody. We need to control whatever damage they're trying to do to the operations *you* run with MI5 and MI6, Mycroft. And we need to find Moriarty, and give them their hang-ee."

"We need to extract Seb first," Paul insisted. "I want him out of there."

"Do not worry about my operations," Mycroft said. "Find out his specific location and I will *tear that department apart.*" His emphasis was cold and cutting and made John shiver a little. 

"We'll do it, won't we Sherlock?" John said glancing around at him.

Sherlock's expression was tense, oddly, and it made John wonder what was going through his mind. "Give it another day. It'll take Moriarty that long to get there himself."

"I am not risking Sebastian to that madman," Mycroft said. "He will not be used at bait. He has been used enough Sherlock!"

"Sherlock, please..." John said horrified at the thought of Jim Moriarty getting him in his sights.

"And if you think it's going to take him that long, you've got another thing coming," Paul said. "I fucking know him better than any of you."

Sherlock snorted. "This is our opportunity to catch him, without having to keep looking over our collective shoulders. And also to find a mole in the home office."

John shifted uncomfortably. "Which is sounds like we should be doing now. Jim is the type to race you Sherlock," he said.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and turned away. "Fine. Fine! Then let's start with the lazy choice, the office outside of London. Mycroft, make a fuss. John and I are going to pretend to belong there. Grab your coat."

John nodded and Paul pushed up with a muttered "Finally," and he saw him checking for his gun. 

"I will make some calls," Mycroft said. "I can… ensure this will never happen again."

"Which I'm sure is why you were so forward thinking in dealing with it in the first place," Sherlock agreed. "No, it couldn't have anything to do with your endless moral dithering over whether your companion is happier as a caged bird or getting picked off by hawks outside as you metaphorically shove him out the cage door... John, don't gape."

"I do not like to cause unnecessary destruction," Mycroft replied. "But necessary destruction..."

John knew he was standing there a bit ridiculous in his astonishment.

But Sherlock was taking off with the stairs ahead of him, and he was mostly expected to follow. He knew that, but if Mycroft was someone, no, he wouldn't let the paperwork get quite so snarled up for that reason, would he?

He set off, just about getting ahead of Paul. "You okay Paul?" he asked as he tried to keep up with Sherlock ahead of him. It seemed he and Mycroft were arguing again and John still wasn't sure if this was a raid, a trap or a political manoeuvre.

Or all three.

"Unbelievable." Paul exhaled it, and there was an edge in his voice, a raggedness under it. His fingers were knotted tightly around the handles of the crutches, as he carefully navigated down the stairs in steady hops. "I can't fucking believe it. I'm going to wring his neck when we get home."

"Who, Mycroft or Seb?" John quipped, trying to keep it light. It was a familiar pattern and he winced when he considered how avoidant he had been having spent nearly five months locked up with Paul.

"Mycroft. He's just let this drag on, because he didn't want to step on someone's feet politically..." Paul clenched his jaw, pulling away as Mycroft veered for his car as soon as they were outside, standard black unmarked disappearing car, and Sherlock kept going past to his own car. "I'll peel off when we get there."

"He seems pretty pissed off," John said. "I've never seen Mycroft like that."

"He's played his little political game and he could actually lose Sebastian this time. Seb isn't in a good place right now, and I don't think he can hold up to a debriefing." John wasn't sure if that was Paul saying that he couldn't stand up to it, or that none of them or maybe it wasn't that deep and he really did just mean that Seb wasn't up to it.

"We'll get him out. He got us out," John said. "I'm not going to stand back and just let this happen to him."

"I won't, either." And Paul might just get ahead of them on the plan. Mycroft slipped into his car, and held the door open for Paul. Waiting.

Then John heard Sherlock call, "John! You're slowing us down!"

"Okay, I'm coming!" he called back and hurried a little, looking back at Paul. "Don't go in there alone okay?"

Paul shook his head, and struggled briefly to get into the car, with someone pulling his crutches in for him before the door shut. Yeah, hopefully he wouldn't do anything daft. Hopefully.

John caught up with Sherlock then, who was actually in the driver's seat for once. It made sense because he still couldn't drive. "Right," he said getting in the front seat. "What do you need me to do?"

"Bluff our way into the building," Sherlock murmured, taking off at somewhere slightly over the speed limit. But there wasn't a lot of traffic just then, and he supposed they might get out of town just in time to hit the traffic jam. "We'll have to split up, but only briefly. We are on the lookout for Moriarty, after all."

John frowned a little. "Are you going to be using me as bait?" he asked just having a little inkling at the instruction of splitting up.

"What? No, no, Sebastian's already the bait." He kept his eyes on the road, looking sideways at John just for a flicker.

"He's not meant to be bait," John said. "Why does everyone seem to feel it's okay to just use him like this?" It pissed him off, it really did. "What will Mycroft do then?"

"Hopefully throw the outraged fit he should've thrown in the first place," Sherlock murmured. "There's a reason why no one's debriefed you yet. The military will, before your official discharge, with me present and not before. There's no additional intelligence to be gained from you that they don't already have through other sources." He still didn't answer why it seemed all right to use Seb as bait.

"So they think Seb has more information? Have they tried asking him without abducting him? Mycroft has the key information, surely," John said. "I don't get why... I don't like the way he's being used and that it's all okay with everyone."

"How, John, is Sebastian being used?" Sherlock usually only gave him a chance to talk like that before cutting him down, but.

"All of this, sending him undercover, he's been through hell and then there's all this political stuff. All he wants is to have a Benefactor who cares for him, and he gets... confusing messages." John was just frustrated, and he knew it was a bit irrational but he hated to see Seb so, well, not like the Seb he knew. "None of you know what he can be like, you don't see what all this has done to him."

"Unfortunately, it's been a rather obvious trajectory that I've attempted to avoid with you as someone should learn from my brother's mistakes, given how stubbornly he refuses to. In this case, capturing Moriarty sooner rather than later is worth using Sebastian as bait. The appropriate individual can be blamed for what the Home office is attempting to saddle him with, and we can all breathe a little easier. Beyond that, my brother hardly knows what to do with his long-time lover, never mind his companion. Add to that Sebastian's now well-crippled self-esteem and he doesn't push things."

"I know I just... I just don't want to see him hurt any more. Any more than I would want to see anything happen to you Sherlock and I don't think any of us can describe accurately what Moriarty is like."

"He's a genius," Sherlock mused quietly. "The web that he's woven, what pieces of it we can see..." Was impressive, enthralling. The longer he was out and free, he might tangle all of them in it, so maybe using Sebastian as bait was all right.

John could follow the logic but he hated the price. "It's not just that Sherlock. I know he's like you and like Mycroft but he's also not like you, he's ...fractured. He jumps tracks in a way you don't and Mycroft certainly doesn't. It's not a deliberate unpredictability, it’s… like breathing to him."

"And what better bait than someone who knows what to do and survive it? Now we just have to hope that he doesn't run away with Moriarty." He merged lanes, and god, traffic was bad.

"…I don't even know what to say to that," John said eventually. "I just can't seem to explain to you. I know Moriarty is dangerous but you are throwing Seb at him."

"No, Sebastian has already been thrown at Moriarty -- by my brother. My brother was seeking a tool to wield when he choose Sebastian. He didn't know what he'd wield it for, but it seemed obvious after a few years that he had the appropriate psychological resiliency to handle the dirty undercover jobs that do need to be done, and why would he risk his lover to that when he'd done it once already to a poor outcome? Overlooking the very obvious thing that had changed when he brought Sebastian home, of course -- the centre, and *you*, John, were a safety net. It's much easier to do that sort of work when one expects to come home to a true network of support. Not be told on your first day that as soon as you seem ready, out the door you go. I think that's a foundation to Sebastian's problems at the moment, and something that I can't *un throw*, as I never *threw* it, John. That's why I was trying to have you spend as much time as possible with him in an attempt to shore both of you up after what had happened, as I occasionally miss boring social cues and Mycroft and Paul are currently both occupying an appalling amount of emotional energy to even be in a room with."

John absorbed all of that silently and eventually exhaled heavily. "Okay," he said finally. "I get it...okay. I'm just. Worried for you as well, and Mycroft, Paul and Seb. This has so much potential to blow up in our faces."

"Yes, it does. I suspect it already has. Now, we do damage control. Compare this to an IED strike, John. The bomber told us what he was going to do and why and how, and we ignored it -- now the bomb's gone off, and the secondary actions are already taking place with us in the kill zone." Sherlock was riding a little close to the car in front of them.

"So… you're saying if Moriarty is exploiting the fact Seb has been taken as a distraction he will have secondary units, plans to target those rushing to his aid yes?" John queried. "Are we talking snipers? Physical harm or abduction?"

"Possibly a further distraction at the building, or something showy. If you were Jim and you were trying to make things so he could get away cleanly... And there's still the question of whether he wishes to kill Sebastian or take him with him. Is he more useful dead and a tied off loose end to the man, or alive and taking a slow death for his treachery?"

"Jim would... I'm not sure. He wants to win and if he thought killing Seb would make him win against you and Mycroft he would be dead in a split second. Paul... Paul he kept alive just… because he had a purpose. It's everything in relation to himself."

"Why keep him alive in the first place? He knew what Sebastian was doing from the start, I'm sure of it." But to win against Mycroft. What a win that was, to subvert the man's companion, make him his own, do things to him that he was quite pleased to declare to god and everyone. To mark him up and make what had been Mycroft's his own.... that was a win for Jim.

"Oh he was sure he could turn him. He was sure he could turn me," John shuddered. "He probably could."

"When presented with you and Paul, that 'turning' failed him, though. Traditional brainwashing does incorporate leaving the victim with a feeling of having their needs fulfilled as well." As if it were a purely academic debate they were having on the way to a movie, rather than a rather traffic impeded drive.

"Mm. I think he tried to alter Seb's needs," John admitted. "He… would say what he was going to do and he was probably probing to see my course of reaction I guess. Only thing is I started off as a prisoner so I could be resistant from the start."

"Where Sebastian was attempting to get and stay in his good graces from the beginning." Sherlock switched lanes, and it seemed for a while that they might actually gain some ground. Maybe. "We will sort this."

"I am grateful you are doing this Sherlock," John replied. He felt he had to acknowledge it somehow. "I know I haven’t exactly been a model companion or anything, and you have been very generous with your permissions for me. I just want to say I really appreciate it."

The edges of Sherlock's mouth turned down. "On the contrary, you’re exactly what I want in a companion. You're called *companions*, not obedient little fucktoys who grow bitter with old age and quietly celebrate when their benefactor dies and leaves them with a mansion and a duck pond." Which possibly explained why he'd never met Mrs. Holmes. "I get a great deal of enjoyment from your *company*, John."

A little praise from his Benefactor and it was like he wasn't a doctor, an individual and he flushed a little know Sherlock would see that. "Compliments Sherlock? Things must be serious."

"It was a very long four months, John." Sherlock looked sideways at him. "Though if I have to keep explaining how much I enjoy your company, I might pull over and make you walk the rest of the way." He craned his head a little as he had to coast to a stop again. "It might actually be faster."

John chuckled a little. "Thanks for that, yeah, it might. London traffics sucks."

"If we're lucky, Moriarty is stuck somewhere behind us," Sherlock drawled, sliding his hands restlessly over the steering wheel. "How's your shoulder?"

"Fine, I've got painkillers," John said. "I'll take some in a bit, when we get there. They’ll kick in soon enough."

"In all likelihood, Mycroft will kick a fuss, we'll slip in the back, get Sebastian and take off running, and there will be neither hide nor hair of Moriarty anywhere to be seen." That... was a hope for John, for all of them.

"Well, I'll keep my fingers crossed, for that option," John smiled. "Easy option all the way."

Sherlock looked sideways at him again, but he was smiling. It was hard to guess what he was smiling at just then, but John could settle and enjoy the companionable -- hah -- silence, even if it was intermittently broken by Sherlock slamming on the brakes hard enough to make the seatbelt jerk tight and make him glad it wasn't over his bad shoulder. Just crushing his wrist now and again.

Still he started to get twitchy as they approached their destination. Out of the heart of London, it seemed non-descript, but then it wasn't meant to be noticeable. "This is the place right?" Mycroft's car was visible and John wondered if Mycroft was already in there.

Just a low boring brick building, military in nature. There were a few other cars there as well. Sherlock threw it into park, turned the engine off and popped his door. "Yes. Follow me. On second thought, we won't be splitting up."

"Not sorry about that," John replied. He felt antsy and wary, looking around all the time. His gun was handy as well. "Do we try and find a back door?"

"This way." So Sherlock knew the facility, or knew the feel of a place like that enough to charge forward, locking the car absently with his key fob as he half jogged, half walked ahead of John.

John took the opportunity to pop his pills so he could keep up. His shoulder still hurt when he jostled it. "If you were Moriarty where would you be?" he murmured as he followed.

"Not here. I'd send a henchman, and I suspect he still has a few of those, though they're dwindling for the moment." Sherlock paused to check the key swipe, and then moved to around the side of the building where there was a handle-less door propped open from the inside with a door stop. "Excellent."

"A little bit easy," John said as they slipped in. He slipped his arm out of its sling and grimaced a little as he tucked the sling away. "We are going to bullshit our way through this?"

"It's an art, John, not a splattering." Sherlock was sticking close to the walls, looking wary and alert and listening. John stopped when he stopped, and he heard voices. Discussions turned a little heated, too easy, too easy, John was telling himself. It was all too easy, because that sounded like Seb up ahead. Nothing ever worked that easy.

He was expecting it to be goddamn difficult and this felt like a trap. Fine well, Sherlock had all the answers so maybe he should go and be the one to go spring the trap. "Shall I…?" he murmured.

"Yes. I'll stay here." He edged up a little closer, half following John, so 'staying here' wasn't a stationary point of action, but.

Okay, time to fake it. He could do that, he was sure of it. Didn't stop him from being nervous though. He could be a helpful admin person sent down to warn whoever that his Benefactor was upstairs creating a ruckus. He deliberately fluffed his hair to make himself look younger than he was and ran towards the sound of Seb’s voice. Locked door. He knocked and said as if he was a panicky minor admin, "Sir? Urgent message from the reception..."

"I said no disturbances!"

"See, even your staff doesn't listen to you." That was Seb's voice, he was sure of it. "Is it any wonder...?”

"Sir, the message I have says the Benefactor of your subject has arrived in reception and is creating...a disturbance," John said. "I was told to run down and let you know."

"Let him create a disturbance," the man muttered through the door, "and leave me to do my job. He'll be miserably sorry to find out this is legal."

"Sir, I wouldn't have been sent down here with this note if they didn't think there was an issue," John replied. "I don't think he cares if it is legal or not."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. Tell him to go home and leave me the fuck alone already, all right?" Seb snapped. "I can't fucking do this anymore, and it's easier this way."

The man behind the door started to laugh a little. "You heard the man."

"Sir, I believe the man with him showed a willingness to pull a gun," John replied. "I believe they were thinking if you want to continue to question him you might have to move locations. They are stalling the best they can. What shall I tell them sir?"

"Tell them that the companion here wants the two of them to fuck off. I'm surprised -- I didn't expect Holmes to actually show."

Seb gave an edged sort of laugh, rough and not at all real, and John stayed outside, listening. Heard a chair move. "I can't keep doing this. It's like a fucking yo-yo. I can't. I."

He considered what to do. The man was not coming out and Seb had lost it. Fuck. He pulled out his own gun and considered whether this was the point to shoot the goddamn lock. Where had Sherlock gone anyway? Somewhere behind him, he'd thought, but he looked behind him and Sherlock was gone. To the other side, and -- oh, shit, that almost took his breath away. He had lock picks, though, and gestured at John to be quiet.

"It's for the best," the interrogator was saying. "They can carry on living their lives, hands clean of you. That's what they always wanted, right? Look at you, you're a wreck. Moriarty probably fucked you fifty ways to Sunday, you don't know whether you're coming or going, and no one's really interested in you that way. Can't blame them, you're sort of a head case, all sectioned off in there. You've got pieces that kill people, pieces that bomb cruise ships, the pieces that convince yourself it's all right, how about that football team you killed, they had it coming, didn't they? Yeah, hands clean is probably for the best, you're not dealing with any of them well, you're not helping. You can't even help yourself. You just do what you're told."

John could hear Seb make a ragged sound. 

"They'll love you in prison, kid. Mass murdering fuckhead, you'll have to be in solitary just to stay alive..."

It was one of the hardest things he had ever done, to stay silent while Sherlock picked the lock. He was ready though, with his service gun in hand when the lock clicked open, although he really didn't want to have to shoot someone. He was more than ready to knock someone out, though.

Sherlock pulled the door open after counting to three with his fingers. John wasn't sure what he'd been expecting -- Seb looked almost compliant, one wrist cuffed to the chair leg, stripped down to his boxers. He could faintly smell piss, and Seb's clothes were a pile in the corner. The interrogator twisted, took half a rushing step towards Sherlock.

It was an instinct because John didn't remember making the decision to hit the man, but he was throwing the punch with his good arm so fucking hard because it felt like all the worry and helplessness he had experienced, could be righted in that one motion. It jarred through him painfully, and crunched satisfyingly against the man’s jaw. "Bastard!"

"There we go, exceedingly effective. I knew you scored well in combatives." Sherlock knelt down beside Seb's chair, and started on the cuff, while Seb's expression shifted towards startled. "This actually isn't at all legal, but we can have that argument when you're back where you belong..."

"I." Seb swallowed. His neck was bruised, and it hadn't been when John had last seen him. There was no reason for his neck to be bruised. The cuff fell away, and he pulled his arm back in toward his body slowly. "Can't keep doing this, they won't give up..."

"They bloody will," John said grabbing his clothes. "Because apparently the Wrath of Mycroft and Paul are currently falling on the department from a great height. And we are bloody well documenting what they did as well so they never do this again." Sherlock had probably snapped photos with his phone as they came in the door.

"Why? I killed, I..."

"Yes, but you certainly didn't choke yourself until you passed out, nor did you put your hands down your own pants, and while the home office may pretend they haven't got rules to follow, believe me, they do." The cuff fell to the floor, and the Sherlock was standing up, trying to goad Seb to his feet. "Come along, we can address your guilt later."

John moved in. "Trousers... shirt...” he said trying to help him get them on. "Come on, there's a back door just down the corridor. We can slip out."

Sherlock tilted his head a little. "No, no good at all. Carry the clothes, leave them off him. I need Paul angry, and losing consciousness like that plays havoc on bladder control. Come on, front door. If we don't already have visitors..." Seb finally stood, shaky and angry looking, but Sherlock was nudging him towards the door. He inhaled, and John did as well. He could smell cleaning supplies in the hallway, and that was sharply new.

He put his arm around Seb, which was faintly ridiculous considering the size difference, and went out first with him. Sherlock was wary, so he was too. 

And with reason it seemed because there was someone in the hall way and he felt Seb stiffen.

Janitor's mop and bucket, and he had an inkling before Seb murmured, "Jim. Jim..." He took half a step towards him, pulling away from John.

"No...” John grabbed him back. "No, Seb." Just seeing him made him feel shaky but he gritted his teeth. "Please... please don't Seb."

"Aw, look at those lovely trained responses kicking in," Jim drawled. "Isn't it wonderful? Do you know I once spent an entire weekend training him to come when I whistled? And I mean that in the sordid sense of course."

That manic grin was worse than he remembered. "And Mr Holmes Junior... Sheeerlock," Jim deliberately drawled the word. "The Virgin Queen, as I like to call you...how are you?"

"Fascinated to meet you. I imagined you were taller." He took a step towards Jim, while John did get a better hold of Seb. "You're somewhat outnumbered."

Jim looked at him. “Am I? An assumption or a deduction?" he said. "And, really, is a comment about my height the best you could manage?"

John wanted to tell Sherlock to back away from the mad man, but couldn't let go of Seb who was still giving him trouble. "Sherlock..." he tried to say warningly.

Sherlock's mouth curved into a smirk. "Sorry, truth hurts sometimes. Now I know why the back door was open. You have flunkies out there right now, of course. The question is..." Seb looked up, past Jim. "Whether my remark sufficiently distracted you. There's no way out now."

John blinked a little as he saw who had entered into the hallway corridor and just caught Paul's expression when he saw Seb and then saw Moriarty and it shifted into complete and utter rage. "Look, Jim, the gang's all here," Sherlock declared, hands tucked behind his back as he... Gestured get on with it. At him, John supposed. Oh.

Paul was going to shoot, he could see it, the crutch was slowing him down a little but if Paul shot Moriarty would be dead - a good thing, but Paul would be arrested for murder. That would mean the end of Seb, Mycroft, and the whole lot of them. Split second decision made, especially as Moriarty was doing something with his cleaning trolley, John shouted "Jim!" and fired, deliberately aiming to drop him in the leg.

Jim screamed, howled as the bullet hit. There was no grace in injury, and the crack of the gunshot was momentarily deafening for John, for all of them. He saw Paul lower his gun, fumble for a moment to re-holster it, and then start towards them on crutches. Sherlock knelt down, with the cuffs from the interrogation room in his hand. "Excellent aim, John..."

Seb had started halfway towards Jim, but seemed to have caught himself, and stayed leaning up against the wall, staring at the cart. There was a flash bang where Jim's hand had been reaching, but the pin was still in. "Fuck. Fuck, you..."

"Someone should uh... check the cart?" John said. "In case there is anything else. Sherlock you got the cuffs that were on Seb?" Never mind, he saw them and took them, antsy about getting close to Moriarty to put them on him, but he couldn't allow Paul to do it, he'd kill him, Sherlock might get distracted... and... Shit. "I could say you're under arrest but I'm not sure what you are under," John said approaching him to put the cuffs on.

It was harder to cuff Jim than he'd expected -- he was flailing, howling bloody murder, twisting and turning. He got a hold of one wrist, and felt half started when Seb knelt beside him and grabbed Jim's other wrist tightly, so John could cuff him. "Not sure it actually matters. Jesus." John could hear the clamour of people from inside the building coming their way, and that would help.

Ahead of them he could hear Mycroft making merry hell with the official who had come down and Paul was ignoring all of it to propel himself forward and get to Seb.

And then because he was a doctor and that was important to him, a part of him, he ripped off a piece of shirt and made an adhoc dressing around the bullet wound he had created. "You'll make it worse," he warned as he tied the knot in the material. 

It was chaos, but John moved well in it. Someone else was taking control of the man, a home office sort, John hoped, and not a Moriarty plant, because Mycroft had been standing beside him, and Seb was halfway to standing up when Paul got there, awkward and looking lost. 

He stepped back then, aware of Sherlock trying to catch his attention and knowing Paul and Seb needed this. Seb needed to see the pure visceral response of someone worried for him, needing him, wanting him and that he came first not some revenge or weird politics. Paul at least could give that to him in that instance.

He saw the bear hug that followed, even as Sherlock steered him back from the scene a little, sliding an arm around his shoulders. "You did excellently, John. That was just what needed to be done."

"I'm not sure if I'm being praised or had my strings pulled." He blinked a little at the scene, with Moriarty being hauled off and Mycroft issuing orders and then coming over to awkward try and work out what to do until Paul dragged him into the bear hug as well. "I...shot him."

"You did," Sherlock agreed. "Which prevented Paul from committing murder."

"And I knocked out the Home Office guy," he said belatedly wondering if he was going to get into trouble for that. "Sherlock...Are they going to arrest me for that?" He was a bit claustrophobic about being locked away in a room and he didn't like to admit it.

"No, minor fine perhaps, but really." Sherlock shrugged his shoulders. "Given that he was simultaneously choking out and molesting an interrogation target, I rather think we can challenge that. We won't be going home immediately, this will take a few hours to clear up..." But better a few hours than a few weeks.

Better any of that than Paul being put away for GBH or gunning down even a criminal. Even with extenuating circumstances it would have meant being out of the military and left him with nothing. And Sherlock had arranged all of it. "You said there would be people outside...should we tell anyone?"

Sherlock seemed to startle a little, spurred into action, "Oh yes -- could someone take care of the sniper outside of the back door?"

* * *

The tenor of it all had changed, and Seb wasn't sure why or how or what to do next. Now Jim was in an interrogation cell, and the whole place was on lockdown after having to deal with the treed, literally, apparently, snipers. They'd tried to get him away from Mycroft and Paul again for processing -- again, he was tired of getting processed, photographed, and fingerprinted, over and over. He was tired of being swabbed and evidenced, and he didn't know... what came next now. Mycroft and Paul should've just stayed away, except Jim was caught now, and that was a relief on so many levels.

He hadn't known how tense it had been making him until it happened, and it was weird but this time Paul and Mycroft were there all the time. Paul just refused to leave, point blank making very loud points about what had happened last time. Mark apparently was trying to out snipe the snipers and until he cleared the area none of them were going anywhere.

"Now you have quite finished," Mycroft was saying. "I want my Companion to have access to a shower and fresh clothing. Immediately. I don't want excuses, this will happen or you will join those other one my list of displeasure."

There was a moment's hesitance, by the by then tired-looking staff member shrugged. "If you'll follow me, then. There's a shower, but none of the detainees are using it."

It was stupid to feel shaken that time, out of everything. He'd kept pushing back hard, contrary, every time Jacobs had pushed, turned things around, tried to point out where the government bore the blame as well. He hadn't expected the man to stand up and walk behind him, locking an arm around his neck. With just one hand free, and at an awkward angle, he hadn't been able to fight him off. He tried flipping them both, tried to knock the chair over, tried everything, and just as everything started to grey out, the man had eased up. Over and over again, just enough air and then back to the edge again, until the guy had felt he was weakened enough to shove his hand down the back of Seb's pants. And really, compared to Jim, two dry fingers up his arse was a walk in the fucking park, but it really. Really left him shaky and feeling weak and stupid.

Paul was livid about it, in a way that was strangely great to see but the spark was back in his eyes that had been missing for so long. He had someone to be angry at now and it had triggered things off. It looked a bit of a sight, the three of them making an unsteady progression towards some crappy little shower.

He was looking forward to clothes, even if it was just detainee jumpers. Being clean again sounded great, and it all felt a little distant. It was probably late in the night now, but there were no windows that let in outside light, and there were no clocks on the walls. He could barely remember that he'd started his morning with coffee and a discussion with Rebecca Moran.

"I'll see about getting clothes," she said, pushing the door open to the bathroom and shower for them.

They trooped in and Paul was looking at him. "You need a hand in there? From one of us?" he asked. 

No, he was all right. He was perfectly all right and self-possessed and he didn't need help for fucking anything. He didn't need anything, except to get a little space and fall apart. Shit. Everything in his head was all structures and carefully balanced spaces that he wasn't sure how to navigate himself. "I don't want to be alone right now."

"Do you want one of us or..." Paul left it hanging.

"Or I believe John is still here if that would help?" Mycroft suggested.

Seb shifted, leaning against the wall in the same fucking soiled boxers he'd been wearing when John had shot Jim, and yeah. Yeah, he was shit at handling things and Paul and Mycroft were a united front in not knowing what the fuck to do with him, and so was he. He didn't know what the fuck to do with himself, either. The urge to say 'never mind' was just unbelievably pressing, but he was used to Jim reading his mind. He was used to Jim telling him what to do and what to think, and Paul and Mycroft didn't know him anymore.

"I want you, I want, fuck, do I have to fucking tattoo it to my forehead?"

"We could arrange that," Paul said dryly. "C'mon Seb, let’s go in. You can make sure I don't fall over."

"Okay." Having something to do made it easier. The showers were crappy, a line of shower heads in a narrow tiled off room, with benches and grated floors outside. They had to leave Paul's crutches there, and Mycroft looked like he'd never had to disrobe in a more disreputable place in his life. He probably hadn't, Seb decided, as he steadied Paul while he shifted out of his own pants.

They were a matched pair, the two of them naked. Both of them bore the marks of the best, or worst Moriarty could do. Paul had avoided them looking at him closely in the light and he could understand why. He seemed okay though particularly as he grinned at Seb and jerked his head in the direction of Mycroft, whose expression was a picture.

He was trying though, he was really trying everything.

"C'mon. I promise the showers won't bite." There'd been that one 'shower', with a pull handle, in Indonesia, that'd had a plant growing in the corner where the foundation had started to become one with the dirt, and that was all Seb could think of just then. Paul'd taken a picture with his phone.

"Yeah, this shower isn't populated with scorpions or venomous spiders," Paul encouraged and Mycroft joined them. After a pause.

"It is practically five star then," Mycroft said.

Seb turned the water on, and leaned under it. It was cold at first, and he did have to keep Paul upright. There was a lot of hopping and wobbling, but he'd missed him, he'd missed both of them, and how was it possible to miss someone and still have them in the same damn room?

Evidently it was, because somehow it felt like he was seeing them for the first time. Looking up, seeing Paul, Paul about to make a stupid decision just because of him and completely ignoring the man who had tortured him just to see if Seb was okay. Paul who was letting him touch his skin when he knew that touch bothered him.

It didn't bother Seb, but Paul had mostly been barely tolerant of it at all up until then. And Mycroft who was... buttoned up, wrapped up in his political games to exclusion of all else, caught up in work. That he was there at all was impressive, never mind standing in a dirty shower with them both, looking out of place, but standing close. Seb shifted a little, got a hand on Mycroft's arm.

It was, all in all, turning out to be a shit shower, but very good to feel them both. Alive, wet, *with him*, no expectations. They were both there, for him. He was even more surprised when Paul leaned forward and kissed him because that had been missing, a piece in their personal jigsaw, and he hadn't pushed but it had taken the heart out of the three of them together. They didn't work unless it was together, all three of them.

He sighed against Paul's mouth, curling fingers carefully against the back of Paul's shoulder, his hand clutching tight at Mycroft's hip. It probably wasn't done to make out in a home office detaining facility shower, either, but that was the missing piece.

The three of them mushed in together, Mycroft's hand on him soothing and careful, Paul's lips on his as he steadied himself against his body. "You're ours," he said possessively and that was new too. There had been that dividing line before but Paul was claiming ownership as well.

Ours. Ours was better than just tenuously tied in, feeling adrift and out of place. Seb nodding, kissing Paul back, pulling at Mycroft. He wanted to stay right there with them and never move, and just thinking about it made it easier to breathe.

How long they stood there, he wasn't sure. It just felt good. Like tension he'd held for fucking years was draining out of his muscles. It did eventually get very cold in the shower as the hot water ran out and eventually Mycroft had to say, "I think we should get dressed. I don't want either of you getting pneumonia." It was such a Mycroft thing to say it was nearly hilarious.

He turned his head, kissed Mycroft's neck, swallowing as he nodded. "Sure. Sure..." It was easy to shut the water off, to keep an arm behind Paul's shoulders to keep him stable on the way to the benches.

"When we get home, you are going to get a proper welcome back," Paul promised him. "I was so fucking worried when we got that call."

"I figured Rebecca would say something." There was a pair of sweats and a t-shirt on the bench that hadn't been there before, so Seb assumed them were for himself. Mycroft was meticulously toweling himself off. "Can we... can we get that straightened out?"

"Yes," Mycroft murmured. "I have... well, let's just say my displeasure has been felt."

"It was fucking awesome," Paul confided. "I'm going to jack the CCTV for you... he has ass kicked the entire Home Office and a few other departments for good measure. Literally demolished the management structure."

"I was trying to avoid that but they went too far."

"Mycroft, I've told you, they've gotten complacent about you. This is a helluva good wake up call."

Seb caught himself smirking a little as he pulled the sweatpants on. "Yeah, I do want to see that. So everything's... going to be settled?" And if Paul wasn't making faces at Mycroft, then Seb assumed it was going to mean he was officially marked off as a companion again. The other possibility had scared the shit out of him in a lot of ways, hadn't been anything he wanted. 

"Yes," Mycroft said. "I have never seen a piece of documentation passed so swiftly in my life. As if by magic a Benefactor Judge appeared out of thin air and signed the legal writ I happened to have on my person. You are Sebastian Holmes in the eyes of the law again."

That was a relief. He pulled the t-shirt on, fingers holding onto the hem edge as he watched Paul shrug his button down back on, fabric sticking to his damp back. He reached out and adjusted the collar for Paul, and it just felt oddly good. "I don't think I'll be leaving the house for a while." Or probably going back to that coffee shop.

"Well hopefully that is a good thing for us," Paul said. "Look, Seb I'm sorry we screwed up okay? And I'm sorry I was so wrapped up in my own shit I didn't do enough for you. I'm still going to have problems but when we got the call saying someone had taken you...that was more important than anything."

He shrugged a little, fingers lingering on Paul's shoulder. "I get caught up in my own shit, too. It's not, it." He was horrible at explaining it. "I just thought it might be better if I gave up and left you and Mycroft together. I don't know how to make anything fit any more."

"It's not down to you to make it fit," Mycroft said. "It's down to all of us. I made a grievous error at the start and made you feel unwanted. I sincerely regret that now, and I want you to feel this as starting afresh."

He could try. It wasn't going to be easy, but it hadn't been easy so far. Nothing had been simple or easy. They kept trying to start fresh and it just hadn't taken for Seb so far. "I want that." Wanting it was important, because he did want to stay there more than anything. The three of them.

"Then we will find a way to make it happen. I want you to think about what you would like...” Mycroft said as he finished getting dressed. 

Expectations were dangerous, and giving him time meant things could be complicated. "I just want you and Paul." That was all. He'd figure the rest out later, with time. There was a lot... a lot to work out.

Mycroft nodded. "Let us get something to eat, and see if my brother has caused any sort of national incident as yet," he said taking a moment to tidy Seb's hair fondly.

It felt oddly normal, and Seb wanted to relish in things like that. He leaned a little to get Paul's crutches from where they leaned against the wall. "You're going to have your old badass upper body back again in no time."

"Back to trying to beat you at arm wrestling again," Paul said getting them together. "I could have used the goddamn prosthetic today, if it had been ready."

"You still made it down the steps ahead of Mycroft." A fit guy with one leg was faster than an out of shape guy with two -- not really a stunning metric, but it was nice. And Mycroft was smiling a little as Seb made sure Paul was steady and moving again because the tiles were a little damp. 

"Yeah not exactly hard," Paul teased Mycroft. "I missed out on killing Moriarty though. I would have done."

Seb held the door, lingering back a little but not too much. He felt better, even if he did sort of need a haircut. Nothing like having it wet and in his eyes to bring that one home. "I know. It's better to have him in custody. There was a lot that he kept in his head. Not... that I think anyone will get it out of him."

"They can have a go. I am sure Sherlock would like to try," Mycroft said. "I'm not sure I will allow it though."

"Probably best if you don't. He has a way of turning people inside out." It was probably best, too, if one of them took care of Jim before he actually went to trial. If there was a trial. Paul knew that, too, and it was best to not talk about it right there. "Are we headed home? Have Sherlock and John gotten out of here yet?"

"They were questioning John," Paul answered. "He did assault an official representative of the Home Office and then shoot someone."

"As Sherlock intended him to do," Mycroft replied. "Until Mark clears the area no one has been allowed to leave, including the staff."

"Yeah, do I get to say a few words about that official representative of the Home office?" Seb edged in a little closer to Paul as he walked. "He wasn't acting above board."

"Oh yes, we'll do an official statement but the evidence will speak for itself," Mycroft said. "And the fact Sherlock thought to take a picture as they came in the door."

"Got him bang to rights and he's lucky he's got anything body parts left," Paul growled.

Seb rubbed absently at his adam's apple. "Good." He'd technically been fair game at the time, but government officials were usually held to a higher standard of at least pretending to be fucking human beings. Still, as far as interrogation techniques, it'd worked pretty well to get his compliance. The man had obviously known that he had a short window of opportunity to get answers.

They made it to the reception area where staff were loitering desperate to go home, and John apparently was lying down on one of the comfortable reception couches.

Sherlock was perched at the far one side of the couch, flicking through something on his cell phone, looking woefully uninterested in the world around him -- except for the other hand he had on John's hair. They looked casual and comfortable, and John wasn't in handcuffs which was good. Not many people got to fire a round off in a facility like that and get away with it, even if it was at an international terrorist.

"We have been here long enough for pain medication to wear thin I suspect," Mycroft observed. "He was over using his shoulder."

"I didn't actually expect any of you to come. Never mind all of you." They made their way over to that sofa, and Seb peeled away a little to get a chair for Paul. He could sit on the floor. He was pretty sure he'd be more comfortable there, anyway. He’d had enough of chairs for a while. "And Mark."

Paul took it gratefully enough and John opened his eyes. "Hey, Seb, they've stopped prodding and poking then."

"Yeah. It took a while. How're you?" He leaned a little, scanning the room. Lots of staff, a couple of the people who'd handled him the first time. Seb made sure to meet their eyes and hold them long enough to make them uncomfortable, while Mycroft settled in as well. It left him a comfortable space on the floor between Paul and Mycroft and the sofa to settle into, knees bent comfortably.

It looked like John was going to offer to move so he could sit up there but he didn't say it, just shifted so if he wanted to he could but John would also understand sitting on the floor between the two men that were his might be preferable. "Yeah, okay. Sore. Didn't bring enough pills like an idiot."

It just felt good to be close to them. John, too, and perhaps even Sherlock, grudgingly. "You probably didn't think this would take this long," Seb offered, glancing a look up at Sherlock.

"I certainly thought your sniper could take out Moriarty's in a quicker manner, Mycroft."

"We had a couple of them who were good."

"A good sniper has to take hours," Paul said. "Mark is...very good at that. And on a target like this, more than one? More than likely."

"I'd rather be sore than dead," John pointed out. "I somehow thought holding you with this arm was a good idea."

Seb grimaced a little. "Sorry. I was thinking about if it was even worth it to tackle him."

John reached over and poked him. "Probably what he was expecting. Expecting the threat to come from you or Sherlock or something."

"You broke his nose. He should've figured you'd shoot him, too." Seb leaned his arms on his knees, almost smiling a little as he glanced over to Paul and Mycroft.

"Doctors aren't meant to do that," John answered. "Or uh… break into the Home Office."

"I'm trying to expand his education," Sherlock added.

He was smirking, a sort of smile that hit the man's eyes. Seb had always sort of worried that John would fall into the type of mess he had, not fitting, not comfortable, not sure what to do or where he stood, and it was a relief, as much as he didn't really like Sherlock, to be sure that John was all right. 

"That's one way to do it."

"I'm starving," John said as well. "Hey, if we had a kitchen you could finally make me that speciality of yours."

He shifted back, leaning an arm on Mycroft's leg. "I have a specialty?"

"You told me you could cook, properly," John said. "Stands to reason you should have a specialty."

It was at that point that Mark re-entered with a very satisfied smirk. "Got 'em. Three... Third one was very good. We're cleared to leave."

The staff were the most relieved sounding about it; Seb mostly wanted to stay right there, because it was a good moment. "I can make a goat shawarma like you've never tasted before," Seb deadpanned. "I dunno, let me check proportions and crap and maybe you can come over to dinner."

"Well, a rousing round of food poisoning does sound enjoyable, but maybe not....well, this morning, given the time," Sherlock murmured, helping John get moving.

"Soon, though,” John said, getting up with a theatrical groan. "Okay, looks like Sherlock wants out so, see you soon yeah?"

"Yeah. We'll talk later." He'd call John, leave a text on his phone, something. Sherlock made quick work of herding him out of the foyer.

"Goodnight, Mycroft!"

"Time to go home then," Paul said. "I'm knackered… longest I've been up and active since I got back. Food, then bed."

Seb shifted up, grabbed Paul's crutches for him, and watched Mycroft check something on his phone. Mark was still lurking nearby, and yeah. He'd been pretty intensely not dealing with him, either. It just all took... effort. "Somehow I think the chef won't be on call right now. I could probably scrape something together..."

"Mark, you know good take away food yes?" Mycroft asked. "Order us some will you? To meet us at home."

"…Really?" Mark hesitated. "Sure, uh, any preference on type?"

"Chinese?" He hadn't had good Chinese take away in a long time. And Mycroft offering was sort of, no, really unexpected. It felt a little like compromise, to get normal sort of food in instead of having to smuggle it back into the mansion by hand. 

"I know just the place," he said as their driver brought the car to meet them as they exited the building. "Any requests or do you trust my judgment?"

"I trust your judgment," Seb offered, lingering to stay as close to Paul and Mycroft as he could.

"Yeah, surprise us," Paul said making his way to the car. "C'mon Seb. Back seat for all three of us. Cosy."

Mycroft nodded to Mark and got in first. "Yes, I think I should try what you all sneak in with."

"I have offered." Ages ago. "Beef and broccoli is always good. Steamed buns." They did pile in, and it was cosy, but good. Paul in between them, and the crutches across the way with Mark, who was dialling up on his phone.

"Shall I just order the whole damn menu?" Mark said wryly and then started rattling off a fluent list of options by number which meant it would be a surprise at least.

Paul was immediately slipping his arm around him once they were underway as if reassuring himself he was there. Fuck. Fuck, he felt like a wreck, but it was good to just close his eyes and lean in, to rest his temple on Paul's shoulder. To know Mycroft was there and no one was going to stay in confinement and he could just go home and maybe not leave for a few weeks because that'd left him feeling shaken. It was sort of amazing how much damage someone could do in a very short period of time.

It had been like some ripping open a vaguely healing wound in some ways. But it hadn't been healing right the first time so maybe it was for the best and feel Paul hold him and press lips to his hair gently and to hear Mycroft murmured an inquiry as to whether he was okay.

"Yeah, I'm all right." Food and sleep would put him a long way, and for the moment, just being there helped. Quiet, not being made to talk about it.

* * *

He'd suggested therapy as a joke, but apparently Mycroft hadn't really grasped that he'd meant it snarkily, sort of an off the cuff remark. But it was apparently good for adjusting to traumatic injuries, and Paul could do his physio in the same building where the therapist also had an office two days of the week. They'd all been vetted, and then after physio, Paul could do therapy as well, and then they could circle back home. It kept it to one security detail, and neither one of them were alone and on their own while they were being poked and prodded. 

Or at least, that was Mycroft's theory, while Mark loitered at the physio on the second floor, and Seb headed up to the third floor to see the doctor who Mycroft had at some point completely subverted to trusting with a long list of agents, apparently.

Dr Thompson was apparently very good at her job and also highly protected by Mycroft's people for the secrets divulged so it was all professional. He was ushered to a waiting room, but hardly had to wait before she came out to see him. "Sebastian Holmes? Would you like to come in? I'm Dr Ella Thompson, but feel free to call me Ella."

"Good to meet you." He was mostly feeling comfortable in his skin just then, in his clothes -- comfortable jeans, comfortable jacket, and warm shirt. It wasn't mission gear, and it wasn't the shit Jim had had him wear. He wasn't exactly keeping up appearances for Mycroft, but that was all right.

She closed the door behind them. "Please take a seat," she said. "Everything we talk about will be confidential, Sebastian. Now have you come to therapy because you feel you need it or because you were instructed to do so?

"I joked that we could all use it." He settled into the chair, stretched his legs out in front of himself casually. "And here I am. But I am sort of a wreck."

"So you are acknowledging you have issues to talk through?" She smiled. "That's a good start. So let’s start ...when you say you are a wreck, why do you feel that Seb?"

"I've just wrapped up a two year undercover operation that... didn't really go to spec. And I'm trying to... settle back into my personal life." Which he hadn't really settled into well to start with, he supposed.

"I get the impression that you are massively understating things," she said. "So, what were the circumstances of this operation?"

"It was..." He closed his eyes for a moment. "I was serving as second in command to Jim Moriarty. In the hopes that I might stumble over my former team-leader who went MIA at the hands of an organization that was loosely related to this other one." He ran his hand over his face and added, "And I was sleeping with Paul. As he was Mycroft's partner before I Came Home."

"Would you describe your initial relationships with your Benefactor and Paul before the operation?" Ella asked not hurrying him.

"Shaky." He let it hang there for a few moments, and then added, "I know, now, where Mycroft was coming from. But I get in the car with him from the centre, and he basically said 'I'm never sleeping with you, it's very off-putting'. We get into the house, and he hands me off to the head of his security to get the tour of the house. At dinner that night, he says that all of my training has been so I can infiltrate this particular group, and after that, he'd, whatever I wanted. I could disappear, be whatever I wanted to, as long as I did that for him. The night I was being presented, he wasn't around beforehand, and he'd set up for Paul to step into the usual benefactor role for..." He made a circular gesture. "Then I find out they're partners and have been for a while. And I feel really, *really* fucking petty every time I bring this up, because they didn't mean it like that, and apparently they changed their minds on the hey, you're free to go part of it, but they also never told me."

"It's obvious you feel strongly about this Sebastian. What part of that disturbed you the most do you think?" she asked.

He slouched a little in the seat, and glanced around the room slowly. "I know the media portrays the companion benefactor relationship as all sex. It... Ideally, you go home and you're your Benefactor's *companion*. Best friend if he's married with a wife and you're straight, or life partner, or you become the wife if you're a girl, whatever. I've seen gross abuse, I've seen heterosexual life partners. But *companion*. So I'm trained to be this perfect complement to Mycroft's brainy, planning oriented life. And I come home, and somewhere in the intervening years not long after choosing me, he fell in love with an experienced adult version of me, it feels like. Amazing operator, great guy, freakishly athletic, fantastic planner, really likeable, steady, cuts right through the bullshit. And there goes my place. I don't fit. I tried. And it's not, I loved the job, it wasn't abuse, it was just... I didn't fit. Suck it up and get the fuck over it. You don't usually get what you want."

"So you resent Paul for taking your place?" she asked. "Or do you resent Mycroft for apparently replacing you without giving you a chance?"

It was worded gently but it cut to the heart of the matter.

And either answer made him feel like a heel. "Mycroft. Never gave me a chance at the start. Never really wanted a companion in that sense. There was just... The mission, off in the distance, that I'd do whenever I was ready. Then Paul went missing, and I thought Mycroft was going to kill himself. It just made sense then to go undercover finally to try to get Paul back." Because there was nothing he personally could do if he'd stuck around.

"So you felt unwanted and out of place," Ella said. "Is that a feeling that still persists?" 

It took him a moment. "Yeah. I mean, they're trying. Mycroft's trying, I know, but..." He shrugged his shoulders tightly. "He says I'm his companion, and he's going to do it right this time, and I'm not sure I believe him. My paperwork had been dangling for about four weeks, and he was very non-chalant about it, about this benefactor who was trying to claim me as his family line. Limbo's a nervous place to be, you don't legally exist, and I kept pressing him on it because I'm fair game as long as my paperwork's like that. Then the home office dragged me in for questioning." And he could see it all sharply in his mind's eye, one table, two chairs, the cuff on his wrist, just disabled enough to not be able to fight back. It wasn't okay, and he handled most everything Jim did fine by comparison because at least he *knew* Jim. 

Seb pressed the heel of his hand against one eye, crossing his legs at the ankle. "Everything's straight now. He had it fixed in probably thirty seconds. It probably would've happened even if my paperwork had been straight."

"Trust appears to be a substantial issue here," Ella said. "It would appear that your trust relationship with your Benefactor suffered a severe blow before it had chance to establish. So let’s look at trust. Who do you trust Sebastian and in what ways? You might trust certain people to behave in certain ways depending on the circumstances so let’s see who comes to mind." 

"I don't, really. I... I trust Paul. His judgment in the field was always beyond the pale, and at least in the personal shit he was always very earnest, even when shit goes wrong. He has a lot of problems with that, and I understand it, but he really does try. We've had a very similar past two years, except I have all my limbs attached and got a lot more sunshine." He rubbed at the edge of his jaw. "I trust John. We grew up together, he's my best friend." There weren't any caveats to that that Seb could bring to mind. Settling back into London had been rough, but spending time with John was great, easy, like putting an old t-shirt on.

"So, to clarify it is principally your Benefactor that you have trust issues with," Ella said and nodded. "Initially however, your resentment seemed displaced towards Paul taking what you perceived as your "space" in Mycroft's life. How do you feel towards Paul with respect to that?"

Seb shrugged his shoulders, fingers knotting together in his lap. "He's infinitely better at it than I am. I mean... just effortless. He's the right fit. Which usually leaves me feeling like an ass."

"It is possible that you underestimate your own capabilities and value," Dr Thompson said gently. "How do you feel about your own capabilities? Give me a frank assessment of what you believe you are good at and not so good at...”

"Large scale terrorist activities?" He laughed, but it didn't seem quite right. "Finding myself in situations I don't want to be in? No, I don't know. I'm good at the job. I can organize operations and participate in them with skill, I've become a very good sniper, though I could use more formal training. I managed to keep Jim alive and taken care of, which is... sort of ignominious, given that he's manic and psychotic as well as brilliant. I don't really think it's a matter of under-estimating myself. I'm just not needed here. I'm excess capacity, and I feel like a drain. Paul and Mycroft don't need my shit." 

"So in essence, you are telling me you don't feel needed not that you are not capable," she summarised. "Okay Sebastian, have you had indications that this is not the case?"

He shrugged his shoulders, and shifted in the chair again, feeling uncomfortable and every edge of that discomfort. "I... They keep saying they're glad I'm back, they're glad to have me, that I'm theirs. Mycroft keeps saying I'm his companion and nothing's going to change that, but I keep getting hung out to dry when I least expect it and then Mycroft swoops in and apologizes and it happens again and again and I can't do it anymore."

"And you shouldn't be expected to do so," she said sympathetically, soothing down some of the defensiveness. "How many times has this occur that you can recollect?"

"Six or seven times before Paul was kidnapped, and I left to find him. Usually I got my chain jerked out from under me and Paul at least told me what was going on. It's been one long string of it since I got back. The paperwork, and the shit with the Home Office, and he's not dealing well with Paul and I've been trying to get him to at least do that right..." And now it felt like not if, but when it would to go crap again. "And that's where the not needed thing comes in, because I'm just a fucking time sink. I don't have anything I can give right now, I'm just..." Taking, and taking, and *requiring* and wanting things he wasn't really entitled to want given that Mycroft had gone two years with no support at all and Paul'd lost a fucking leg.

"...deeply hurt." Ella said. "Sebastian, you don't have to give anything right now... it is possible that you are entitled to receive at the moment. Is it possible that your Benefactor might have come to value you more in your absence while you were on the mission?"

"Sure. It's also possible that I haven't been living with a psychopath for the last two years, but a very aggressive species of dik-dik." He rubbed at the side of his jaw again. "I don't know. He doesn't really know what to do with me. I don't know what to do with me."

"I think it is possible the problem is that you are being given space and no demands at this point which is a situation you are patently not used to," Ella replied. "And from the sounds of it your mission exacerbated those issues so that now it is very difficult to view circumstances in another perspective. Tell me about the mission and the relationship there."

"It was long, challenging, and in turns exciting and horrifying." Seb wasn't, *was not* going to recount the whole thing again, or any part of it. "I... was Jim's second in command. I did what he wanted me to do when it seemed possible, and pushed back when he was going to get us all killed or tank the whole operations. He sabotaged regularly enough I think just to see if I'd catch it. It was very much a companion role. He liked that. I just put what he needed and wanted first, and that was how I survived. When I... felt like I was getting something, it was really exactly what he wanted. I respond pretty well to being scared shitless and in pain, so it worked."

"And how was it to be needed like that?" Ella queried. "To perform a companion role so thoroughly?"

He closed his eyes for a moment. "I'd never really done it before, and I know it's fucked up, but I relished it. I lost sight of myself a lot, but... to be trusted that much, after always feeling like I wasn't trusted at all, felt good. It was all a massive lie, I wasn't actually a runaway and he had Paul hiding right under my fucking nose, so, you know. Not really the best experience to be comparing to anything else."

"So in effect, he appeared to trust you but did not and your benefactor appeared to to trust you but apparently does," Ella summarised. "A complicated situation to unravel. Part of the problem is that I can see so far is that you are interpreting actions or lack of them without direct confirmation that your interpretation is correct. In a mission brief, as I understand it, assumptions have to be verified. We do not know the motivations of Mycroft and Paul and trying to interpret their actions in a void leads to conclusions that might be wholly unsupported. The first exercise is to try and think of the reasons for their actions and then tackle them on it. At this point I cannot say if you are wrong or right...and that is the point."

"... okay." It sounded lot like it was still his fault, which was sort of... Fuck, maybe it was. 

Ella paused for a moment. "Sebastian, I'm picking up from your tone that you feel blame as a result of my suggestion. Is that true?"

He squinted at her for a moment, and then looked away. "Given that it generally is my fault and I'm coming to the wrong assumption, and then Paul or Mycroft backfills me on some important bit of information they never gave me, yeah. It probably actually is my fault."

"It was not my intention to assign fault. You are making conclusions based on the information you have received," she said. "I am trying to open your mind to the possibility that there might be more to it...which yes, has not been communicated to you. I am not saying it is your fault that you do not know, but it is a constructive thing we can do to aid you...explore the possibility, see how well your initial conclusions match with those made after additional information."

So he needed to get into the habit of grilling them. But it couldn't hurt. It wasn't like things could get worse, or he could possibly have less to go on. "Okay."

"Part of this will be difficult as to effectively do this you have to know and understand your Benefactor." She smiled at him. "Believe me if he were sitting here I would be advising the same to him about knowing and understanding you. Think about him as a person, where he came from, how that might have shaped his personality, his means of looking at the world. Then you can try and apply that to his action...and then you can ask him. I recommend starting small."

He had half a contrary reaction of Fuck this, in his head, and he pushed it down, because he really did want it to work. He always had wanted it to work, and he was crap at confronting Mycroft, at pushing and asking. It just hadn't been something he was ever good at. "I'll try it."

"Good. We'll finish on that today," Dr Thompson said. "Take the time you are given to explore these emotions and feelings."

It that was what therapy was, it sucked, Seb decided as he stood up. "Right. Thanks." He had a headache and he felt like Shit. Mission accomplished. Still, Paul was next and that was probably going to be worse for her than him.

Waiting for Paul just gave him more time to think about what they had talked about. It was...weird. His conclusions seemed sensible, logical even but Mycroft played things so close to his chest. What did he actually know about Mycroft when it came down to it?"

Not a lot. He was logical, too deep in the government, he'd been doing his job for most of his life in various capacities. He'd grown up with Sherlock.

He tried to imagine that and with a strange feeling of unsettled uncertainty wondered if Mycroft was just used to someone who could read him in such detail it was like telepathy. Was that why he didn't communicate properly? He didn't have to or it was second nature to try and grab and hold some level of privacy.

Or both. It made a lot of sense, but he'd have to ask. See if it was the right assumption. Because Mycroft didn't need to clutch his privacy so closely anymore. He was pretty sure he'd blunder last plenty of open secrets.

Paul, when he emerged, looked haggard and worn again, as if it had just stirred up the bad memories. He almost didn't notice Seb in his hurry to get away, fumbling for his crutches and then caught sight of him. "Hey, Seb... time to go yeah? Had enough of hospitals for one day."

"Yeah. Want to stop anywhere on the way home, or...?" Seb shifted, fishing keys out of his pants pocket. He'd give it a minute or five, wait until they were in the car, then ask how it was. It was double worse for Paul, with the physio and then the therapy, and it seemed a bit cruel.

"Anything you want. Feel like my fucking brains have dribbled out of my ears," Paul answered. "Maybe we should. Not sure I can deal with Mycroft for a bit."

Seb wasn't sure he could, either. "Okay." It was easy to fall quiet on their way to the elevator, to put his hand on the door for Paul so the elevator didn't shut on him, to walk through the lobby to the parking garage. He kept to Paul's pace, because adjusting his stride was easy; he was used to walking with John or Jim, and getting ahead of it made it hard to talk. Even if no one was talking. "Park, maybe? Coffee?" Throwing out options was better than “I don't know, where do you want to go?”

"Somewhere quiet yeah," he said. "Grab a Starbucks or something, I don't know." He looked like he'd been through the ringer and was pretty quiet when they got in the car and Seb gave instructions to their driver.

Seb slouched into the seat beside him, eyes half closed. "How'd it go for you?"

"Pretty much along the lines of having a hole slowly bored into my head," Paul said wearily. "You?"

"I jump to conclusions a lot." He shrugged, looking sideways at Paul.

"Yeah, me too. Maybe it's a hazard of having to do so under pressure," Paul admitted. "Damn. She didn't even scratch the surface and I nearly lost it. How the hell am I ever going to do anything normal if I can't even have a conversation?"

"Work your way up to it?" Seb suggested carefully. "If you go off at me, it's okay. If you want to practice."

"I don't want to use you when you've got enough of your own shit to deal with," Paul said. "But then apparently I should be telling people but. How the hell do I even go there huh?"

“'Hi, I feel really unstable right now?'" Seb managed a bit of a smirk. "Part of my shit is that no one is using me. I think. I lost the thread in there somewhere."

"Wait, I'm meant to be using you *more*?" Paul asked incredulous. "What about mission burnout?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I want to be useful. I miss having a purpose. I want to help."

"You know, I thought we were a bunch of smart guys," Paul said. "Turns out we suck when it comes to this stuff. I mean, you helped that night...but I thought that wasn't fair on you. You looked pretty damn pissed off."

"What night?" He was getting a feeling that they were all emotionally crippled.

"When I was having a meltdown and you dragged Mycroft down," Paul said with an exhaled sigh. "I kept thinking, I should be doing that sort of thing for you."

"I was pissed at Mycroft, because he was upstairs oblivious. It's probably the most useful I've felt since I've come home." He turned a little, knee nudging against Paul's good leg. Well, better leg. It was a hell of a modifier for the problem. "Yeah, do that sort of thing to me. I can't." Fuck, he needed to focus. "I want to feel needed. I spend a lot of time feeling like the useless third wheel."

"You are kidding me…?" Paul stared at him, suddenly laughing with just a hint of hysteria. "Jesus... you want to know something? Before I met you I was convinced, seriously convinced you were going to replace me. You know, the younger model, sexier, hot, brilliant, then I met you and... Holy crap I wanted you for myself you know that? Then after this… all those first doubts came back. I'm… broken, not the man I was and… I've been kinda waiting to be put out to pasture you know?"

"I feel like I just walked into a Salvador Dali painting." He leaned in, carefully half-hugging Paul across the shoulders. It wasn't more because he rather liked leaving his seatbelt on. "Jesus. No one is putting you out to pasture. I'd go out of my head if it were just me and Mycroft. We both would."

"You think it was all roses without you there?" Paul said. "You've had an effect on him I never had. Humanised him. We hardly ever used to have sex and half the time he had to get drunk enough to let go."

"I plied him with cheap box wine when you were in the hospital." Seb ducked his head down, and pressed his forehead against Paul's shoulder. "It was a disaster. I freaked out." He hadn't tried anything since, either, so his magic sex ability had just gone as well. "Do you want to get coffee to go and finish this on the back porch?" There were trees and everything, and quiet. As well as a low likelihood that Mycroft would actually walk through the dirt. 

"Yeah, okay,” Paul said. "Coffee. Where would we be without it?" he said. "You know, I would have been stunned if you had been able to do something then. Possibly a bit worried."

Without coffee, they'd be without one less comfort food, one less social crutch. "I wasn't really in a good mental place at the time. I'm not really much better right now." But he liked that, he liked touching Paul, he liked talking to him. Grounding himself. He liked talking to him a hell of a lot better than he liked talking to Dr. Thompson. "If... what was it like before I came home?" He'd never known, and maybe Paul could get a better grasp of old memories that way.

"I met Mycroft on his Service. I thought he was a first class wanker straight off," Paul said with a faint smile. "He hit his Service young, and I was meant to body guard him and I was all… for fucks sake...look at him." Paul shook his head. "And then I realised… well, discovered that he's fucking brilliant and it's breath-taking. He… someday I'll tell you all the shit he did then but it was amazing and he had a quirky sense of humour I wish I could get him to show you. I fell for him... and I headed up his first strike force. We cut through objectives like a knife through butter you know? And yeah, he's not good at talking and emotions - as far as I get it the whole family is like that but it's not because he does have them. He over thinks everything. Thinks it to death, cremates it, scatters its ashes to the wind. But it was good. I prefer more sex, and Mycroft would try.... but." He shrugged.

"Yeah. Still. I'd like to meet this other Mycroft some time." Mycroft with a sense of humour sounded... like Sherlock with a sense of humility. A rare creature that was possibly extinct, or at least on the world wildlife federations' warning watch list for extinction. And it was, really, probably their fifth time trying to 'start over', but fuck if Seb was going to give up. He wanted the three of them to work.

"Yeah well, I haven't seen that much of him. He made a mistake and I got. My team got completely shafted. Prisoners. Might have been one of Moriarty's organisations I don't know. Torture, the works and eventually I got out. Making a mistake was the end of the world to him," Paul said.

It didn't sound like the end of the world. It sounded like what had followed the mistake had been the end of the world. "He was going to kill himself after you got snatched. Losing you was the end of the world to him." It wasn't a baseless assumption, he'd tucked the gun into the back of his waistband after taking it from Mycroft's hands, after unloading it. He smoothed his thumb over Paul's shoulder, swallowing, because he wasn't going to cry in the back of a car when the driver probably already thought they were crazy. That was still an intensely sharp, painful memory to handle.

"Yeah, not all about me though," Paul glanced at him. "You don't get it do you? Maybe you do but you haven't applied it to Mycroft. Mycroft would have looked at that and it wouldn't have just been about losing me, making the wrong judgement call, it would have been about the judgement calls he was going to have to make to get me back. It would have been about doing what he said he would never do to you once he had made up his mind."

The long game. The very long game, and probably involving more layers than just them. If it was like Jim... "Yeah, well. I wasn't exactly read in to that plan, so it never really." Seemed like a regret, or something that Mycroft could potentially regret. He'd been coming at it from the wrong assumption. How could Paul think Seb was going to replace him when he really really had no clue how Mycroft thought? "I just wanted to get you back."

The intercom buzzed on, the driver from the other side of the privacy screen. "We're here."

Apparently they had picked up coffee too, because they were handed that as they got out of the car and headed off to sit outside somewhere. Paul seemed to be thinking deeply about things, or concentrating on using his crutches until they sat down. "You're right... a lot of this would have been easier or make more sense if we'd discussed it with you all the way along. Mycroft tends not to do that...I guess it's a habit from never having to discuss things, but I should have known better. Should have told you about what we discussed but I…I guess I was forgetting you were a Companion at that point."

"Not sure whether to be flattered by that or what. It's not like I'm part of some other species of human, but I sort of have a different psych profile." It felt better than being in the back of the car and not really paying attention to the fact that the car was stopping or moving or what. Their driver had probably just been glad to not have to do that for a week. The stories the staff had to take home at night... He handed Paul his coffee as they settled in on a ridiculous stone bench in the back yard.

"I meant... you were young, you still are but...I forgot the level of maturity you have," he sipped the coffee. "I wouldn't normally tell someone, a soldier or any one of your age about plans that didn't happen. That was. Under-estimating you I guess. We should have. I mean I was pissed off at Mycroft at the start with the whole presentation thing and debacle but... chalk it up as a complete bollocks up on the part of all of us I guess. Doesn't make it easier but I guess it was a reason." 

"I knew about the plan, though. I thought I was still executing to it, eventually. I sort of... held onto that." He twisted the cup in his fingers for a moment, looking across the far too manicured lawn. He had an urge to dig holes in it. Add some wildlife. "It wouldn't have changed anything. I still would've done it to try to get you back, whether I knew or not."

"Knowing that, believing that made all the difference," Paul replied. His voice sounded a bit unsteady. "It was… hard." And that was probably the biggest understatement in history. They really didn't do well with talking but Paul was definitely making the effort and he appreciated that. 

"Yeah." He pretty much wanted to deal with just one item at a time, and one of them had to do with Jim. It was sort of best to just consider that whole matter redacted, smear it over with ink and be done with it, except that wasn't working. "Do you want to talk about any of that, at all?"

Paul shrugged a bit. "...I don't know if I can yet," he replied. "Do you want to talk about the stuff he put you through?" 

Seb gave a shrug of his shoulders. "I agreed to most of it. So no, not really."

"Yeah, not sure I'd call that a reason to not be traumatised by it," Paul answered. "He was very good at making things seem like a choice." He exhaled. "Anyway, so big problem is you don't know how to read minds. That's a bugger."

"Pretty much." He leaned his shoulder against Paul's, and took a slow sip of his drink. "I did get into the habit of coming pretty close to that with Jim. Surprised him a time or two. It was always a choice of bad or worse, though. Or something small escalated until you're..." He gestured vaguely. "Up to your elbows in blood and no idea how you got there, or how it ended in what felt like rape."

"Yeah, pretty much," Paul agreed. "Not always a good thing to completely understand that type of mind. The really impressive thing is to come away as sane as you have." He slung his arm around him automatically, and it was nice that Paul was accepting the casual contact now.

It was something Seb craved, but felt stupid asking for -- just contact. No expectations, just contact. Human warmth, if he had to boil it down to a reason why. "I feel like a complete head case." He swallowed, added, "I've had a couple of mornings where I've had the ‘I could just kill myself and get it over with’ debate. I had a really great hysterical jag in the shower yesterday. I know Jim's just sitting in his cell, biding his time, anticipating the next game and the next fun thing and the next fun thing after that." 

"Frankly I'm spending my time plotting elaborate means of killing him without being caught,” Paul said with a smile that had little humour in it. "I know why your friend John did it...I wasn't thinking straight and I probably would be on trial for murder but half of me wishes I had just popped him with a headshot." He pulled Seb in to him. "I'll make a bargain with you, if you don't kill yourself, I won't either because I'm sure as hell doing the same thing."

"I'm a little tall to really effectively hang myself on the showerhead. I'm pretty sure I'd just break the pipes, and then, you know, I just imagined Mycroft standing in the doorway with the same look he had on his face that time Lady Wester's Corgi pissed on his shoe." He leaned into him, sneaking his arm around behind Paul's back. He was getting to the point where he might start avoiding showers altogether, because Jim'd loved *loved* having sex in them, and there were memories and thoughts knotted up with them that bothered him. Baths, maybe. "If it gets that bad, tell me. Tell Mycroft. Don't just..." Chew it over and chew it over.

"Yeah easier said than done. Talk to him and there's this huge guilt that descends on him. I hate seeing that because. There were times I wanted to see that, wanted him to know it was his fucking fault and that would destroy him," Paul said, clearing his throat. "I don't want to do that, that's what Jim wanted to happen, he wanted to take him down, turn everyone against him, and make them reject him. You hear what Sherlock's theory was? That Mycroft rejected him as a Companion by not choosing and had you instead umpteen years later."

"Yeah, John mentioned it." In that incredulous 'Do you believe this insane theory that is probably true because Sherlock's like that' tone of voice John had that made Seb smile to hear. "Which, if it's true, Jim got to break all of Mycroft's toys. And had a great time going it. Next target... Sherlock. He was fixating on him pretty intensely." Which meant their time was probably winding up anyway, only they hadn't known it. There was some timer in Jim's head that said it, though.

"Yeah I figured," Paul said exhaling. "And that really wouldn't end well for anyone. Although, he miscalculated on a few things. I don't think he counted on Mycroft falling for you...I'm pretty sure he thought Mycroft would abandon you, not gut half his network in the government to get you back. That would have made it easy to pick you up there."

Which had been why he'd been lurking outside the door with a janitor's cart, and... And Seb shifted a little, turning his head to look at Paul while he repeated some of that to himself. "What do you mean, Mycroft gutted half his network?"

"That whole thing. Getting you back as his Companion. Moran is powerful in his own way and Mycroft was trying to do it legally and getting blocked, delayed. Doing the political dance he does, putting pressure on here and there. When they took you, he burned all his bridges there. You looked at the papers recently? He didn't mess around - the moment he thought you were in danger he cut them out, used his favours, destroyed contacts and gutted that whole damn area when they tried to stonewall him. He won, but he's going to be counting that cost...but I know he doesn't give a shit about that." Paul shifted. "You didn't know?"

"I've been avoiding the papers." Because he was a mass murderer and that was still pretty headline news, the ship, and it was easier to just. Not watch the news, read the news. Any of it. "How would I know?"

"Mmm, yeah, a good point," he said and shrugged. "Well, he did, and knowing Mycroft he will never tell you because well. He’s kinda an idiot."

"I just thought he was stalling, given how... They finished out processing me and you two told me my paperwork was straight." He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, concentrating. He could feel Paul's side under his hand, his arm over his shoulders. "Fuck."

"Okay, there's a whole shit load of communication problems here," Paul said. "Look, I'm not saying he doesn't screw up sometimes and get it wrong but usually he has a rationale in his own head that makes sense as being the best thing for you." He squeezed him slightly. "So, yeah. I don't mean let him off the hook but he wouldn't deliberately use you like that. He's not Moriarty."

Maybe that was the problem. He was too used to being used. He gave a shaky exhalation, and ducked his head a little. "No, he's not. I just... I spent more time with Jim than I did with you guys. It's kind of hard to just shake that shit off."

"Yeah, I get that," he ruffled his hair just a little. "What can I do to help you, aside from allowing you to help me?"

"This is pretty good right now," Seb murmured, looking back out onto the lawn. That was really good, really good. "Just call me on it when I do weird stuff?"

"You are talking to the guy who encourages weird stuff," Paul said with a faint smile. He went quiet for a bit. "It bothers me he's screwed up my reactions to sex."

"What'd he...?” No, he really knew, but he still wanted to ask. There was a better way to ask. "Screwed up how?"

"I'm not sure, I mean he pushed everything." Paul seemed uncomfortable. "Rape was just the warm up."

"Stopping there would've been dull." Seb stretched his fingers a little. "I'm all keyed up for pain now. The more overwhelmingly bad it is, the better. But I can't even manage a normal blowjob without falling apart."

"What happened? I mean why did you fall apart?"

"My heart just started racing out of control. I couldn't stop shaking. Mycroft stopped me immediately, and we ended up reading." Because he was a good benefactor, a good partner. Annoyingly conscientious. The shaking had stopped as well, and since then any time in bed together had mostly been for comfort or sleep, or some other combination of depression and exhaustion.

"Jesus." Paul grimaced. "I don't want to freak out on Mycroft, its hard enough to get him in bed and in the mood without putting that in the mix. Look, he did a bit of that with me, and pushed me out beyond limits I was used to. I guess... Can we work on it together?"

"If you want to. If you're comfortable with it. I still think we could get him involved. I mean, his default setting is no, let's not. It's not bad to have a voice of annoyingly understanding reason sometimes." He pressed his foot against the cement outcropping the bench was on, and sat up a little taller, still holding onto Paul. "I'm going to litter this place with birdseed and corn cobs."

"Comfortable it won't be, but...I want it to be eventually," Paul sighed. "I'd rather do the obstacle run than have an hour of therapy."

"I miss the obstacle run." Seb's eyebrows came together a little. "I miss working. Have to get back to that eventually, too." There was a long list of 'eventually' to get to, but for the moment he was glad to just sit there with Paul.

"Seb, you wouldn't even break a sweat with what people call work now," he said. "You could do my… Mark's job in your sleep."

"I think I might like something a little more hands on," Seb shrugged, leaning into Paul a little. "I'm used to more hands on."

"You set up those sniper teams didn't you?" Paul said. 

"I did. I also knew all their weak spots because we turned and burned teams pretty regularly." He wasn't really following where Paul was going.

"You've got a lot of experience doing what I was doing. Setting up teams," he said. 

He shook his head tightly. "Motivations were all wrong. It wasn't... I trusted them as far as I could throw them."

"Still got something I can teach you," he said. "It’s. I’m getting cold. We should go in I guess."

"Yeah, you have plenty you can teach me. Let's go inside and... Do something. Read or keep talking or." He didn't want Paul wandering off to his room and him going to his and everyone being apart and alone.

"We can cook something for Mycroft for his dinner. You can show me how to do that," Paul said sounding determined.

"All right. Spicy, or sweet?" He pulled back, slowly, just to hand Paul's crutches to him, to help him to his feet.

* * *

He was so bloody tired.

It was that place of tiredness where everything seemed unreal and going forward three more steps, never mind for a brisk walk with a psychotically active friend. Seb had always been really active, really comfortably physical, really likely to say 'hey, let's try this!' even when it was an awful idea. He was so tired that there was a low level ache in his jaw, and there were piles of books in the livingroom from Sherlock's research and John wasn't entirely with Seb's antics just then. He cherished his time with his friend. John was glad that he was seeming a little more Seb-like at the edges. But standing there on the sidewalk while Seb stretched out on it and fished a hedgehog out of a hole in a drain grate, with his eyes almost rolling back in his head from being so damn tired, it was sort of hard to feel enthusiastic about anything.

"Think I've almost got it. You'd think it'd want to not-drown..." Seb squirmed, ridiculously long armed and still having to fish for it. "I'm so glad there aren't snakes here. What was the most hideous creature you ran into downrange, John?" 

Jim was the obvious answer.

He didn't say it and shrugged. "Saw a big cat off in the distance. Locals said it was picking off sheep and goats. Not sure what it was. Lynx maybe." His voice sounded a bit flat but he was starting to run out of energy. He just couldn't seem to sleep. Well, not strictly true. He couldn't get a good run at sleeping because he had hideous lurid nightmares that woke him almost constantly through the night.

"I had a running list of all the animals I spotted, sketches, too. Snow Leopards were gorgeous. Kept it in this stupid fancy molskine Jim gave me." Seb's eyebrows were working thoughtfully, cheek pressed against the grate, and then they went up sharply. "Oh, fuck, fuck fuck, you little fucking, Christ, he's like a cactus..." He was leaning up, though, and curled into a tight ball in his hand was a very wet, sludgy, muddy hedgehog. Half of Seb's arm was covered in grate muck as well.

"Jesus Seb, just put him down… I need to clean you off. Do you want your goddamn hand to rot off?" It was a bit of an overreaction but he couldn't help it.

"It’s okay, John, my hand isn't going to fall off. I had a cactus needle go right through it once, it's fine." And Seb was just grinning, hand loose, shifting the angry creature with his other hand much more gingerly to the inside of his coat. "If I set him down he's probably going right back into the grate."

"Well what are you going to do with him?” John asked. "Fuck it, come on, we'll rinse the poor bugger off and stick him in a box of shredding or something, then you can liberate him wherever you want."

"Back yard," Seb agreed, peeking down into his coat, before grinning at John again. He was still holding his slightly injured, muddy hand out from himself, as if that was any damn help. "You. Look tired."

"Yeah well, maybe I am," he admitted and shrugged. "Come on. We'll shower him off. He's probably got fleas too." He wanted just to sit down but no, he was going to be showering a bloody hedgehog.

It was like Seb had never run out of the energy he'd had when they were kids. It wasn't even fun tired, where everything was funny and bizarre and he kept catching himself drifting into space, it was a miserable aching bone deep tired. "We're lucky I don't have fleas," Seb smirked, putting his good arm over John's shoulder. "Sorry. I'll make dinner up to you by cooking something."

"It's okay," he said automatically as they headed back towards the flat. He had come out hoping to push through the weariness and hit the sort of hollow functionality he had managed before. It was taking time though. At least Sherlock would be out chasing a lead or something.

Small miracles. "We should name it before I set it loose in the yard. It's uhm, squirmy, c'mon, don't fall out." Seb was halfway murmuring to himself, and John was completely out of it on the walk back. All he could think about, bizarrely, was disinfecting Seb's hand. Who honestly, sanely, fished around in drains?

Floating around in the forefront of his mind was the infected gangrenous wreck of Paul's foot and leg and the knife edge of antibiotics or lack of them, the stench of it that made him gag. He wanted the damn scratch cleaned, smothered in antiseptic and given half a chance antibiotic cream too. He had a box somewhere, cardbox and they had shredded paper. He remembered they liked cat food or dog food or something from one of those BBC wildlife things. They probably had something in the fridge it would like. 

His rumination took him all the way home and the stairs seemed like a bit of a mountain as he limped up them wearily. 

"Run the shower over him," John suggested. "Luke warm, I'll get a box and something for it to nibble on." Poor little sod probably was exhausted trying to get out of the drain. 

Seb opted for the kitchen sink -- why did John keep saying shower? Possibly because a nice hot shower seemed like a good place to sleep just then, running the tap while he fished the dirty creature out of his coat. "Thanks. I know you didn't sign up for wildlife rescue today."

"It's okay, glad you spotted him. I didn't see him." He had hardly seen anything. Box, where was the box and the shredding? He poked around in the spare room where they threw junk and found one that would fold over, and half filled it with shredding. 

Seb was running the creature under the tap, manhandling it carefully. He'd taken his coat off and thrown it over a chair in a careful way. "Yeah, he saw us coming and went scurrying right into oblivion. I think I've caused enough deaths without meaning to... C'mere, look at this. He's trying to bite me. Rwar, try harder, kid."

"Stealth mentally challenged hedgehog in the middle of urban London for god's sake," John answered. He waited until the water was off, but barely, and started cleaning the scratch and overdosing it with antiseptic while Seb held the prickly creature in his other hand, still wet.

"That's very British, don't you think?" Seb was watching, but not commenting on what John was doing. "Anywhere else, it'd be rats."

"We get those too," he said. They'd had a lot of rats in Afghanistan, in the cell. He hated the bastards. "There… done. Keep an eye on it okay?"

"Yes, ma'am." He was teasing it as he leaned into John's good shoulder gently. "I've asked you six different ways what you want for dinner. Maybe a nap?"

He startled a little. "I'm being a shitty host, aren't I?" he said looking at Seb. "God, I'd kill to be able to sleep properly."

"Like I give a shit about your host quality, John. Come round to ours next time, we'll roll out the red carpet. Leftovers from the chef, and you can join Paul and I on the couch." He nudged John gently back to the living room, while manhandling the hedgehog into its new box. "I'm past the point where naps are uncool. How great is it that we can sleep in the middle of the day?"

"But I should be at least conscious for your visit," John protested weakly, but he really wanted to just close his eyes for a moment. Seb was here and that was comfortable.

"Sometimes it’s overrated. Paul and I spend a lot of time just... Existing." Seb leaned, looking around to nab the blanket that was piled on the floor. "Here, sit down and shift up. Or I can. Whatever."

"Just for a few minutes," John said shifting up. "Then we'll have whatever you mentioned to eat." The relief of being able to stop made him feel oddly emotional.

"Shitty stir fry, coming up." Seb shook the blanket out thoughtfully, and wrapped an arm loosely around John. "You thought about therapy?"

"What's there to talk about? I'm fine," John replied leaning in and exhaling with relief. This was familiar and no expectations to be a companion just then.

He could just close his eyes and breathe. "I'm finding it useful. It helps me get out my own head a little. I'm fine, yeah? But not really. And Paul's coping. But not really."

"I'm really glad it's just… I really do feel okay except for sleeping," John answered. Leaning on Seb… yeah, familiar scent, the feel of him. It was like home.

It was like home, if home didn't feel compelled to run off and chase some fragment of a clue, and it was fascinating, but he did hit limits. "All right." Seb stroked fingers slowly over his arm. "Get some rest."

"You'll rest too right?" he asked yawning. "I won't go out long, never do.”

"Yep. Doesn't take much."

Seb shifted, seemed to relax a little more, and just... It was easy for John to let go.

* * *


End file.
